A nonprofit serving women who are deaf in Montreal is asking courts to allow a class-action lawsuit on behalf of more than 40 of its members who say they were sexually, physically and psychologically abused at a school for the deaf run by sisters.
La Maison des Femmes Sourdes de Montréal (The House of Deaf Women of Montreal) on June 9 filed its request for class-action status in its suit against the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor — known as the Sisters of Providence — who ran l'Institut des Sourdes-Muettes de Montréal (Institute of the Deaf and Dumb of Montreal). The sisters ran the boarding school from 1851, just eight years after the order was founded, until 1975, when the Canadian government took over the Quebec education system, according to the document.