The chair of a recently closed Christian boarding school in Ontario has apologized after a rash of complaints from former students about abuse at the school.

Geoff Jackson, chairman of the board of directors of Grenville Christian College in Brockville, Ont., confirmed in an interview with the CBC late Thursday that he had issued a personal apology to the students.

He also confirmed that the board is meeting to consider a more formal apology and possible financial compensation for the victims.

"From a personal point of view, obviously I apologize for the fact that any student at the school — regardless of when they were there — suffered any kind of abuse," he said in an article published in the Brockville Recorder & Times earlier that day.

The abuse allegations from former students of the school, which closed in August, have been widely circulating on internet discussion boards and  in recent media reports.

Richard Van Dusen, who attended the school from 1979 to 1981, is among those who have gone public with their stories.

He told CBC he will never forget the day when teachers pulled him aside, prayed over him, and then ordered him to confess.

Van Dusen, who was 17 at the time, said he didn't know what to say, so he described the times he misbehaved as a child.

"They beat me with a piece of wood," he recalled. "A number of times, I had to bend over a chair, and it hurt a lot, obviously."

He said he was then ordered to scrub pots and was forbidden to talk to anyone but teachers for two months.

Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien said he had heard about that kind of abuse before his son became a student there in 2005 and he began serving on the school's board of directors.

"I asked a number of people about the rumours, including the people that were part of the school management," he said, "and they never gave me any response that indicated that there was a problem."

Grenville Christian College closed in August after 37 years as a private, Christian boarding school. The school blamed changing demographics, declining enrollment and rising costs for the closure.