Abuse: from the front.

Cornwall Standard Freeholder

Friday, December 01, 2006 – 10:00

Local News – ABUSE: from the front.

The charges resulted from a four-year investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police called Project Truth. During the course of the probe, the theory that a clan of pedophiles was at work in the Cornwall area for several decades from the 1950s to the 1990s gathered steam as charges were laid against a number of priests from Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese, a city doctor, a lawyer, a Crown attorney, several businessman and a school bus driver, among others.

Former city police officer Perry Dunlop was one of the first people to suggest a clan of pedophiles was working in Cornwall and used the term in documents related to a multi-million dollar lawsuit he launched against several individuals and organizations, including the Cornwall Community Police Service.

During Lapierre’s Montreal trial in October 2001, Marleau said he felt as if he was being shared by the priests.

“I was like a beer being passed between these men for years,” Marleau said at the time.

no evidence

The OPP never found evidence that a pedophile ring was operating in Cornwall during its Project Truth investigation.

Also on Thursday, an application to seek a stay of a recent ruling by the inquiry’s commissioner was adjourned at the Ontario Divisional Court.

Earlier this week, attorneys for the diocese asked the commission to put a publication ban in place on the name of a priest mentioned in testimony this week. Although Comm. Normand Glaude denied the motion, lawyers for the diocese said they would seek a judicial review of the decision.

Glaude put an interim ban in place until such time as the lawyers could seek an extension of the ban from the divisional court in advance of a review. That extension was expected to be sought Thursday, but one of the judges at the divisional court in Toronto recused himself from the matter due to a conflict of interest.

Commission staff confirmed Judge Denis Power, a former defense attorney, once acted for Jacques Leduc, a city lawyer who was charged under Project Truth with sex-related offences, in the course of a civil suit which resulted from a $32,000 payment made by the diocese to an alleged victim of sexual abuse.

The charges against Leduc were stayed in October 2004.