It’s been one year since Paddy Munro held her son as he shivered, emaciated, in a hospital waiting room. A full year since he slipped out of the observation room and back to a dilapidated hotel on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. One year since the worst day of her life — when she got a phone call saying her son was dead.
Sean Munro fought to vanquish his intrusive thoughts for more than 20 years, his family says. He struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder, body dysmorphia, alcoholism and more. At the root of it all, his mother says, was what happened in a small office at a Vancouver private school in the 1980s — with a teacher who they believe never should have been there.
“I want to go back and I want to do more,” Paddy says. “I wish I could have done more.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Their first clue came two years after the boys graduated, when Vancouver College sent letters to alumni letting them know Burke was facing criminal charges in Newfoundland related to his time at Mount Cashel.
“It would obviously be in the public interest for a person of his calibre to return to the teaching profession,” wrote James Gushue, Newfoundland and Labrador’s former chief justice, in his sentencing decision.
CBC News has reviewed his medical records — thousands of pages of written notes from psychiatrists and psychologists outlining each of his attempts to get better.
CBC News has interviewed two other men — one a former Mount Cashel resident, the other a former Vancouver College student — who both told similar accounts of being bare-bottom spanked by Burke.
Burke’s lone conviction from Mount Cashel was for beating a child on the bare buttocks so hard he couldn’t sit for days.
His alcoholism and mental health issues often brought him to the homeless hotels and streets of Vancouver, where his family would find him and convince him to go back to treatment again.
The original article contains 2,119 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 92%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
