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Grenville Christian College – The Canadian Anglican Church responds

So many people seem to have known…

The CBC is now part of the growing media coverage on the closing of an elite private school in Brockville, Ontario – Grenville Christian College, and the now public stories of abused students.

For over a year former students at the private Anglican school have been posting their experiences of abuse – the school closed a few weeks ago.

The school’s board of directors met this week, jurisdictional and structural responses to former students are starting after The Globe and Mail began reporting the stories of abuse.

Prior postings are here and here. The Canadian Anglican Church had said it had no jurisdiction over the school, now the Bishop who oversees the Brockville area will meet with a former student tomorrow and has launched a inquiry.

CBC:

Geoff Jackson, chairman of the board of directors of Grenville Christian College in Brockville, Ont., confirmed in an interview with the CBC late Thursday that he had issued a personal apology to the students.

He also confirmed that the board is meeting to consider a more formal apology and possible financial compensation for the victims.

“From a personal point of view, obviously I apologize for the fact that any student at the school — regardless of when they were there — suffered any kind of abuse,” he said in an article published in the Brockville Recorder & Times earlier that day.

The abuse allegations from former students of the school, which closed in August, have been widely circulating on internet discussion boards and in recent media reports.

The Globe and Mail continues to be on top of rapidly unfolding events.

Anglican authorities have begun investigating the activities of a retired Anglican priest who was headmaster for two decades of a now-closed private Christian school where alleged abusive cult practices were carried out.

The decision now rests with Bishop George Bruce, in whose Eastern Ontario diocese Grenville Christian College, near Brockville, is located.

He will decide whether to inhibit – or suspend from all priestly activities – Rev. Charles Farnsworth, 71, while the investigation is carried out.

Anglican canon law specifically allows for inhibition in disciplinary inquiries “if it appears to the bishop that great scandal is likely to arise if a priest continues to perform the duties of his or her office while a charge is under investigation …”

Canadian Archbishop Fred Hiltz has also responded to a student who found their voice:

“It is clear that you have experienced a great deal of pain. The issues that you raise in the letter are serious and the Anglican Church of Canada is very committed to addressing all allegations of abuse, particularly where children are involved.”

The Anglican Journal which initially mentioned only that Grenville Christian College had closed is now beginning to cover official response.

Grenville Christian College, a recently-closed private school in Brockville, Ont., which is facing allegations of psychological and physical abuse of its students, “has never been” an institution of the Anglican Church of Canada, according to an Anglican bishop and the chair of the school’s board of directors.

“There is no direct relationship at all between the Anglican Church of Canada and Grenville Christian College,” said Canon Geoff Jackson, board chair of the school, based in eastern Ontario. “The references to it being an Anglican school are not true.”

Three of the five former headmasters at the private school were Anglican.
The building was bought from the Catholic Church by a group called Berean Christian Schools in 1969, renamed Grenville Christian College in 1970 and appears to have been under heavy influence by a US Anglican cult called The Community of Jesus. The group running Grenville also called themselves The Community of the Good Shepard. Parents paid up to 35 thousand dollars a year for tuition and boarding.

According to former students complaints were lodged with police, with Massachusetts Children’s Services (where the main sect is located) and one of the most striking aspects of this story is what the former owner of The Brockville Recorder & Times had to say.
For 30 years he has regretted not publishing anything about abuse at the K to 12 school because of threats.
Cape Cod Times picked up the story, tying it in to prior investigations of The Community of Jesus. The Prescott Ontario paper has noted former teachers have rented a local church and renamed their school St. Lawrence Christian Academy.

So many people seemed to have known…

In a pastoral statement issued to his diocese, Bishop Bruce said the diocese, “has at no time had any contractual or de facto responsibility or control over the operations of Grenville Christian College.” He added that the college was operated by its board of directors as a “non-profit charitable benevolent religious corporation.” He said, however, that the diocese “has occasionally, at the invitation of the college leadership, provided clergy (including bishops) to officiate at regular services of worship.”

…Vianney Carriere, director of communications of the Anglican Church of Canada, said the national office was “not planning to issue a statement at this time.”

The Anglican Journal staff initially published this.
The Brockville Ontario paper is now reporting the story 30 years later.

So many people seem to have known…

Update: Brockville Recorder & Times: Father Farnsworth (this is not an aware or repentent man)

Tom; Your letter from the Anglican church looks alot like the one I received from the same guy (after sending in my complaint.)
Want to hear something ridiculously funny? On the one he sent me, the title was actually “Form letter” (Oops, he must have been busy that day.)

Grenville Christian College – wiki
Grenville Christian College forum

Published 2 years, 5 months ago 4 comments

4 Responses to “Grenville Christian College – The Canadian Anglican Church responds”

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1 BD on Sep 8th, 2007 at 11:59 pm

Brockville Recorder & Times Saturday September 8, 2007

Farnsworth reaching out to ex-students ‘Whatever happened on my

By MICHAEL JIGGINS

Staff Writer

The priest who ran Grenville Christian College at the time some former students have claimed they were subject to physical and psychological abuse is reaching out to those who are “hurt.”

At the same time, Reverend Charles Farnsworth insisted the portrait of the now-closed private Christian boarding school that’s being painted in newspaper articles and on an Internet message board isn’t accurate.

“I’m available … there’s nothing I’d rather do than give comfort to those people who are hurt,” Farnsworth, a Brockville resident, said in an interview this week.

“We’ve shed tears over it,” he said of the abuse allegations.

“Some of the things that have been (posted) … it’s pathetic. If it happened just like they said it did, we were awful people. But I’m convinced, and I’m honest before God, the way things are put there are not the way I saw them. And other students have said, ‘I never saw that.’”

Farnsworth, who is now in his 70s, and his wife, Betty, ran the school for some two decades until his retirement in 1997.

Several times during the interview with The Recorder and Times, Farnsworth stated he was not speaking out in order to defend himself against the allegations.

“It’s just hard for me to take and I hurt like crazy when people that we thought we loved and cared for and loved and cared for us are standing and saying these things about us,” he said. “But I don’t know how to get out of it. I’m an adult and I have to take it. Whatever happened on my watch, I just have to take responsibility.”

Nor, he added, was he claiming those former students who are now speaking out are lying.

“The people who are on this Internet, whose words I’ve read, although I may not agree with what they say, I know they feel and they hurt deeply over something,” said Farnsworth.

“And I know I was involved. Whether I caused it, I don’t know that – I don’t know their condition before they got to us.”

Asked directly if he felt he had anything to apologize for, Farnsworth responded, “No, I don’t. Not as far as intention is concerned. There may be things that we did that I would do differently now.”

He would not give examples of what things he would change.

While Farnsworth may feel he has nothing for which to apologize, former staff member Joan Childs said in the Globe and Mail newspaper series that she’s sorry for the treatment GCC students suffered at the hands of staff.

Reached at her home in Brockville, Childs would not speak to this newspaper.

“I have already committed to the Globe and Mail that I wouldn’t talk to anybody else until they are finished with this, whatever they are doing,” said Childs.

Farnsworth has seen Childs’ apology.

“If she feels she should do that, I don’t have any problem with her doing that,” said Farnsworth, who added he was unaware of any incident for which Childs should say she’s sorry.

“Nothing comes to my mind. We were extremely close for the longest time. … We did normal private school discipline,” he recalled.

Those incidents for which Childs has suddenly said sorry were the subject of a Recorder and Times investigation in 1989, although the article that resulted from reporter Mike Moralis’s work was never published.

Former R&T publisher Hunter Grant, whose daughter Meredith tells her story of being mistreated at GCC in today’s paper, said he regrets not going to press with the story then.

He said Moralis had obtained details of what’s now coming out, complete with named parents and students as sources.

“Then, all of a sudden I don’t know why, I don’t know how it happened, but every single one of them called and let us know they didn’t want to be quoted. They were afraid of repercussions there,” said Grant.

“So, when all of the collaboration disappeared, so did the story – at least that was the sense of our libel lawyers.”

Grant said the paper never made another attempt to get the story into print, but noted, “We got the sense as time went by that the school knew we knew and may have altered their behaviour.”

As for his reaction to the current media attention, Grant said it’s time those responsible are held accountable.

“I’m not sure what form that takes, I just look at it and say there’s got to be some way that these people have to pay for the damage they’ve done,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the firestorm of allegations surrounding the school and himself, Farnsworth said what saddens him is it’s tarnishing the image of a school whose graduates went on to accomplish great things in business, the arts and government.

“We have physicians, we have lawyers, government people, people with their own businesses, retired millionaires from several lands. … There’s been a real, positive influence – far more than the negatives that we’ve heard this last week from the Globe and Mail,” said Farnsworth.

While he said no former student has called to confront him about the abuse allegations, several have phoned to thank the school for the impact on their lives.
2 Kate Skinner on Sep 22nd, 2007 at 12:54 pm

Please don’t let this story die. I was also a student at GCC. One semester 1978 – winter. It was a nightmare. I can best be contacted at xxx I have to go to the library to use a computer so e-mail is not checked more than once or twice weekly. I also have no internet experience

Hi Kate:
The story is not dying, and it has been updated this weekend.
To help you out (we all start at the beginning on the internet:^) here is the latest.

Grenville Christian College former students have a forum to support each other and provide a safe place. They have the latest developments and ways to get in touch with former classmates and teachers if you wish. It is here. BD
3 Rev Malachy Egan on Dec 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm

ANGLICAN ABUSE OF YOUTH CONTINUES. Newly elected Anglican Primate Fred Hiltz, now comfortably ensconced as Archbishop of a titanic Anglican Church of Canada [ACC] as is speeds towards schism over the same sex blessings [SSB] issue, made the following campaign promises on his way to the General Synod:

The mission of the Church is the mission of Christ
To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God
To teach, baptize and nurture new believers
To respond to human need by loving service
To seek to transform the unjust structures of society
To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth
Rejoice! Victory for Whom?

Pretty much what you might expect; although the ACC’s actual record of performance over the years, including Hiltz’s personal record while overseeing Nova Scotia and PEI, falls so far short of ‘mission accomplished’ as to be an ecclesiastical joke.

For the record, here’s what I see as the underlying agenda of Archbishop Fred Hiltz as he begins his primacy:

First. Continue to sweep past or present abuse under the carpet and do not take responsibility, financial or otherwise, for abuse issues within the church.

Primate Fred knows all about the residential schools and the horrific abuse of First Nations Children, he used that platform to raise money for various non-related causes: for Fred it’s a money spinner, perhaps this is why an Anglican culture of abuse continues to this very day. You don’t believe me? Ask the Right Rev. Peter Mason, the retired bishop of the Anglican diocese of Ontario, and Anglican headmaster Rev. Gordon Mintz of Grenville Christian College in Brockville, Ontario which closed its doors at the end of July, about the inquisition and abuse in their school: the former covered things up, while the latter was busy perpetuating the foul legacy learned in those ghastly ACC concentration camps for aboriginal children. This is breaking news in September 2007 as the victims come forward and try to patch up their broken lives, and it all sounds so depressingly familiar, does it not?

In Christ,

Malachy