QUEBEC – A Quebec priest, facing multiple counts of sexual assault involving 13 boys who attended a private Catholic school in the 1980s, pleaded guilty in court Monday morning at the opening of his trial.
Raymond-Marie Lavoie, 71, was a teacher at Seminaire St. Alphonse, in Ste.-Anne-de-Beaupre, just outside Quebec City, when the assaults are alleged to have taken place.
A first man, who was 12 at the time of the events, pressed charges against Lavoie in 2008.
Quebec provincial police launched an investigation and eventually found other alleged victims: all boarders at the college in the 1970s and 1980s, who were between the ages of 12 and 15 at the time.
Lavoie was first arrested in December 2009 and faced charges of sexual assault, indecent assault and gross indecency.
He is also facing a class-action lawsuit.
Lavoie is named in a statement of claim filed last year that alleges that up to five priests were involved in the systematic abuse of young boys between 1960 and 1987 at the Seminaire St. Alphonse. The suit was authorized by the Quebec Superior Court last November.
The school, ran by a group of missionary priests, closed in 2001.
Among other allegations, the document says the priests "consulted with one another and conspired in an effort to determine which students they would abuse, and divided (the victims) up amongst themselves."
Lavoie has been suspended by the church pending the outcome of his case.
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