'The forgotten boys': Three men file lawsuits claiming sex abuse at former Catholic boarding school in Edmonton
Date Shared: August 24th, 2024
Date Released: August 21st, 2024

Excerpt


St. Mary’s Salesian Junior High is the subject of three new statements of claim filed in Court of King’s Bench this month, seeking millions in compensation for alleged abuse at the north side school.

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David Gordon, Keith Eisenkrein (Sieben) and Stephen Bounds are among the plaintiffs in a series of lawsuits claiming they were sexually abused while attending Edmonton's St. Mary's Salesian Junior High in the 1970s and '80s.

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The plaintiffs are David Gordon, Axel Montaner and Keith Eisenkrein, who attended St. Mary’s in the 1970s and ’80s. The three came forward after another former student, Stephen Bounds, filed a sex abuse claim last year.

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The lawsuits — which contain allegations that have not been proven in court — name seven alleged abusers, at least three of whom are dead. Also named are a variety of institutional defendants, including the Salesian Order, Edmonton’s Catholic Archdiocese, Edmonton Catholic Schools and the provincial ministry of education.

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Montaner attended St. Mary’s from September 1977 to June 1978. He claims Patrick Saavedra — a Salesian brother who taught at the school and died in 1984 — groomed and sexually abused him when he was 13 years old.

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Gordon’s stint at St. Mary’s began at the same time as Montaner. He claims that in the spring of 1978, Thomas Shively, a Salesian brother or priest, sexually abused him by exposing his genitals and engaging in forced masturbation.

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Eisenkrein attended St. Mary’s between 1983 and 1987.

He claims he was groomed and sexually abused by Saavedra, Marc Desjardins and Steven Whelan, the school’s principal. Desjardins — who is also named in Bounds’ lawsuit — was arrested in 1984 and charged. He eventually pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault and two counts of gross indecency involving four boys at the school. He has since died.

Whelan, meanwhile, was found civilly liable in the U.S. for sexually abusing a boy in the early 1970s at St. John Bosco High School in Richmond, Calif. At last report he was living in a Salesian provincial house in Berkeley.
edmontonjournal.com