15 years later, Mount Cashel cases appear to end

The Mount Cashel sexual abuse trials, which have rocked Newfoundland and Labrador for 15 years, appear to have come to an end.

A Newfoundland Supreme Court judge gave John Evangelist Murphy, 75, who was convicted of four counts of indecent assault on boys living at the orphanage in the 1950s, a 20-month conditional sentence on Friday.

Two of the victims read victim impact statements in court Friday; neither of them felt today's sentence was appropriate.

Police say Murphy's trial was the last known case involving sexual abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers, a lay order that ran the orphanage in St. John's for 115 years.

Murphy, who now lives in the United States, will be placed under house arrest in Newfoundland, for now. He may later be permitted to serve part of his sentence in the United Sates.

The Mount Cashel Orphanage opened in 1875 to care for orphaned and needy boys. It closed in 1990 after charges were brought against brothers for sexually abusing or beating boys who lived in the orphanage in the 1960s and 1970s.

Subsequent police investigations were opened into claims of abuse dating as far back as the 1940s.