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It’s been nearly a decade since the Grenville Christian College closed, but some of the institution’s former students say they’re still haunted by what happened behind its doors.

From 1973 until it shut down in 2007, the elite private boarding school northeast of Brockville, Ont. promised pupils a world-class religious and academic education at an idyllic campus on the shores of the St. Lawrence River.

But a $225-million class action lawsuit alleges that pupils who lived and studied there got something much more damaging — a strict regime of arbitrary discipline, bizarre religious practices, and systemicabuse that left them “sexually, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually traumatized.”

Grenville denied the accusations in the suit, which was launched in 2008 and certified in 2014. According to a statement of defence the college filed in 2010 “there is no truth whatsoever” to the allegations. “The representative plaintiffs were never, advertently or inadvertently, subjected to any conduct in the nature of physical or mental abuse,” the statement said.