Mount Cashel

The Mount Cashel Orphanage was an orphanage that was operated by the Congregation of Christian Brothers in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The facility is remembered for a scandal and protracted court cases regarding abuse of children.

In 1898, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of St. John's Michael Francis Howley donated land for an orphanage on the northeastern edge of the Dominion's capital, approximately 1 km (0.62 mi) north of Quidi Vidi Lake. The orphanage was named the Mount Cashel Boys Home after the Rock of Cashel in County Tipperary where it is said that Saint Patrick baptized the pagan king Óengus mac Nad Froích in 450 AD. The facility was located on the eastern side of the intersection of Mount Cashel Road and Torbay Road. The Mount Cashel Orphanage, as with numerous other orphanages in Newfoundland, received a bequest from the estate of James M. Ryan in 1917.

Following Confederation in 1949, the provincial government began to place wards of the state at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in the 1950s.

For the last 40 years of operation, the facility was operated by the Christian Brothers of Ireland in Canada (CBIC). The CBIC announced on November 27, 1989 that the orphanage would be closing.

Canada's largest sexual abuse scandal—one of the largest in the world—was disclosed in 1989, resulting in the closure of the facility in 1990 after the last resident was moved to an alternate facility. The property was seized and the site razed and sold for real-estate development in the mid-1990s as part of a court settlement ordering financial compensation to the victims. Today a Sobeys supermarket at 10 Elizabeth Avenue and a small residential development called Howley Estates sit on the land once occupied by the orphanage.

...
Wikipedia