An out-of-court settlement is in the works in a case of sexual and physical abuse dating back more than half a century.

However, a number of alleged victims could oppose the settlement, on the grounds that it does not go far enough in acknowledging the suffering of victims.

The abuse took place at Bishop's College, a private boarding school in Lennoxville.

One victim, who we will refer to as Jack, says he endured abuses at the hands of Harold Forester, a chaplain, teacher and housemaster at the school.

When Jack was 14, in 1959, he says Forester punished him for a minor indiscretion.

He says the older man summoned him to his room, one morning, ordered him to undress.

He says Forester beat him with a hair brush on his bare buttocks.

"Then he started to massage my buttocks, round and round and round, all the while breathing heavily and making funny noises with mouth," he says.

Jack says he still lives with the psychological scars of what happened.

"I had panic attacks, I had depression, I had hypochondria," he says

Jack says Forester was not the only one who abused him, or some of the other 40 people involved in the lawsuit against the school.

"I'd also been caned once by a headboy, once by the headmaster and once by a housemaster," says Jack. "It happened about five times that I was sexually or physically abused."

Anxious to put everything behind them, the two sides have been working on the fine details of an out-of-court settlement, expected to be filed Friday at the Montreal Courthouse.

While terms aren't public, Lawyer Irwin Liebman says that financial compensation is likely to be far less than the five-million dollars given to sex abuse victims at Montreal's Selwyn House School.

"No sum of money will ever rectify the suffering and the trauma suffered by these individuals," says Liebman.

"We just feel it's sort of an insult to our intelligence and to our suffering that the school would just say, here, take this and go away," says Jack.

He claims the school must acknowledge and apologize to victims.

As for financial compensation, he would like to see victims offered an amount in the range of $50 to $60-thousand each.

Jack and at least four other claimants are prepared to oppose the deal.

If enough of the alleged victims are against it, Board Chairman Kurt Johnson says the school could annul the settlement.

A judge must also accept or reject it at a hearing set for August.