The class action names as a defendant the attorney general of Nova Scotia, who represents the province’s correctional services through the Department of Justice. The province also denied the allegations of sexual abuse in its 2020 statement of defence. Mike Dull, the Halifax lawyer behind the class action, says the provincial government ought to have known what was going on. The three plaintiffs named in the class action were held at the centre at various times between 1988 and 2007. Prof. Peter Jaffe, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Western University in London, Ont., says survivors of childhood sexual abuse rarely report what has happened to them.