HALIFAX – A class-action lawsuit against the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children over abuse allegations is close to being settled, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said Thursday.
Ray Wagner said “substantive issues” – including financial terms and a plan by the Halifax orphanage to provide an apology – have been agreed upon.
“There’s just dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s left to do,” he said in an interview.
The class-action involves about 140 former residents who alleged abuse at the home over a 50-year period up until the 1980s.
The lawyer who represents the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children did not return messages for comment.
The plaintiffs are still pursuing a class-action lawsuit against the provincial government, and Wagner says that will now become the sole focus of the legal battle.
He says the clients are pleased.
“They’re very happy,” he said. “They feel vindicated after all these years and all these years of aggressive litigation.”
Tony Smith, a former resident of the home, said the imminent settlement shows the claimants’ cases have legitimacy.
“This is long overdue,” he said. “It should have been done a long time ago. … Better late than never.”
He said he is also waiting to see precisely how a public apology is worded.
“It has to acknowledge the fact there has been a wrong done to us,” he said.
Documents filed by the home’s executive director, Veronica Marsman, in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in January had denied any knowledge of systemic abuse at the facility.
She also said in the court documents that it may have been the children themselves who physically, sexually and mentally abused each other.
Last month, police announced that they wouldn’t be laying criminal charges after concluding there wasn’t enough evidence to support the allegations of abuse.
Although Premier Darrell Dexter hasn’t committed to calling a public inquiry into the matter, he says the province is consulting with those who could be affected should one be called.
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