School of secrets | CBC News – CBC.ca
VII.
It was March break in the late 1980s, and Phelan was excited. He was about eight years old at the time and had been invited with a group of boys to the headmaster’s house for a sleepover. He felt special.
When he found out Farnsworth was going to let him watch Goonies, a popular movie from the 1980s he had been forbidden from seeing, he was over the moon.
Farnsworth’s 18-year-old son Robert was also going to be there. Robert used to take Phelan and another young boy to get ice cream.
But later in the night, after everyone was in bed, Phelan says he was woken up by someone in his room. It was Robert.
“I just remember I was lying on the ground, I had red striped pyjamas and I remember him taking the red striped pyjamas off of me. And I just remember him fondling my genitalia. I remember seeing him fondle the genitalia of the other boy as well.”
Later that night, he says he got a visit from Robert’s father, headmaster Farnsworth.
“I just remember he had such a distinctive voice.… I remember that voice just saying ‘Michael, Michael’ over top of me. And I remember him fondling me as well.”
After that night, he says the abuse continued and escalated.
Like him, Grace Irving has painful memories that began as nightmares in her Grade 11 school year.
She disclosed the details to her parents for the first time in 2001, when they finally agreed to move away from the school.
“And at some point after that I felt safe and comfortable, you know, to tell them that I had been sexually abused by Charles Farnsworth as a child.”
Farnsworth died in 2015. His son Robert didn’t respond to requests for an interview.
Farnsworth’s other son, Don, who was also a senior administrator at Grenville while it operated, responded to an email from The Fifth Estate denying the allegations of sexual abuse, saying they are untrue.
Don Farnsworth also approached The Fifth Estate crew while we were filming at the now-shuttered school, denying all accounts of abuse at the school.
“Often stories like this start out with ‘Once upon a time.’
“I believe that systematic abuse is terrible, but I don’t believe that happened here. There was no one here that had any intention of harming any child.”
Warnings about abuse, however, go as far back as 1989, The Fifth Estate has learned. That’s when a local journalist investigating the school passed his findings to the Ontario Provincial Police and a senior member of the Anglican Church.
“The specifics I would have had would have been about separating the families … discipline, psychological emotional abuse,” says Mike Moralis.
He says neither the police nor the Anglican Church showed any interest in what he’d found.
A letter obtained by The Fifth Estate written to the Anglican bishop of Ontario in 2001 from a senior administrator at the school shows at least one person was concerned about abuse at Grenville, although she appeared to be more concerned the authorities would find out.
The writer informed the bishop about Irving’s sexual abuse account involving the headmaster.
“What happens if this young lady goes to the police?” the administrator asks the bishop. That will be “devastating” for Farnsworth, she writes.
“What if this opens the door to all the other accusations that have come our way?”
When asked about the warnings in the letter, the Anglican Diocese of Ontario acknowledged receiving them, but pointed to a court decision that found it had “no duty of care” in the Grenville case and that there is “no evidence [it had] any direct involvement” in any abuse at Grenville.
The church says it didn’t go to the police about the accusations against one of its priests because the author of that letter “disbelieved the allegations” and “never informed the bishop of the identity” of the alleged victim.
But why would any of that stop the church from going to the police?
“Jurisdictionally it’s frankly a nightmare to try and connect the dots between the Anglican Church [and Grenville], but there’s clearly a great deal of complicity,” says Marshall, who has studied the relationship between the two organizations.
“There’s clearly a moral and ethical responsibility.”
Seven months after it was warned about allegations of sexual assault involving its priest at the school, the Anglican Diocese of Ontario ordained another priest who would become a headmaster there, a man by the name of Gordon Mintz.