The Boys of St. Vincent is a 1992 Canadian television miniseries directed by John N. Smith for the National Film Board of Canada.
It is a two-part docudrama inspired by real events that took place at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's, Newfoundland, one of a number of child sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Boys of St. Vincent received widespread critical acclaim and was included in lists of the Top 10 films of 1994 by Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and USA Today.
The Boys of St. Vincent was a co-production between the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Montreal’s Les Productions Télé-Action Inc.[1] For the orphan characters, the production sought out young boys with no prior acting experience to act alongside experienced professionals like Henry Czerny.
The judge reasoned the broadcast could sway public opinion about four members of the Christian Brothers order, who at that time were being tried for actual cases of abuse in the Ontario courts, and thus impede the perpetrators' right to a fair trial.
[1] Two years later, the Supreme Court established a legal principle that protected free expression in a decision known as Dagenais vs. Canadian Broadcasting Corp.[1] Daniel Henry, the CBC's senior legal counsel at the time, said the court decision "'changed the equation … in the years since, it has become established as the bedrock principle on which all publication restrictions are weighed.
David Ansen of Newsweek wrote, "An American TV movie would focus on the courtroom drama, the triumph of delayed justice.
"[7] The Austin Chronicle said, "The horror is filmed with admirable restraint, with director Smith opting for a less-is-more approach that only reinforces the tragedy of the events depicted.
It's hardly an uplifting movie, and it ends on a distinctly sour and abrupt note, but The Boys of St. Vincent is far and away one of the best publicly funded looks at institutional child abuse ever to come out of television, Canadian or otherwise.”[8] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was less positive and wrote the film "was disappointingly superficial, offering no psychological insight or depth of characterization and simply showing us evil clergymen and victimized children as cliches in a morality play.
"[9] In 2019, a retrospective review from The Globe and Mail stated, "No drama had ever depicted the brutality of trusted authority figures in the Catholic Church (this, in the wake of 1989′s massive abuse scandal at Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland) in such vivid terms, against children no less, in prime time.
Twenty-three years before Hollywood’s Spotlight, it defined in dramatic fashion the deep psychological and institutional roots of abuse, and the power some have to cover up such devastating crimes.”[1]