Cornwall Standard Freeholder

Saturday, December 02, 2006 – 10:00

Terri Saunders

Local News – A sexual abuse survivor said Friday testifying at the Cornwall Public Inquiry has served as a second helping of closure.

Claude Marleau spent four days on the witness stand this week, at times delivering emotionally difficult testimony about painful memories from his early teenage years.

Now 54 years old, the Montreal-area lawyer is coming to terms with the abuse as well as the way criminal charges against his abusers made their way through the Ontario justice system.

“I had some closure after the trials,” he said, referring to a series of court cases involving a number of men he says abused him in the 1960s.

“Coming here to the inquiry has also been closure as well.”

Marleau said he was never satisfied with the outcomes of the 2001 Ontario trials – all three men he accused were acquitted. He said it wasn’t until Rev. Paul Lapierre was convicted in Montreal and sentenced to a year in jail he felt the system finally got it right. “Finally someone was found guilty,” said Marleau. “Finally.”

Marleau said he has high hopes the inquiry can affect change in the community.

“I think if one person can be saved (the inquiry) has done its job,” he told the commission earlier this week.

As for whether or not substantial change will ever been seen within the sacred walls of the Catholic Church, Marleau is not so certain.

Earlier this week, he told the commission while he was born and raised a Catholic, he now considers himself an agnostic with “no use for the church.”

“I regret the fact my parents ever baptized me in the Catholic faith,” he said.

On Friday, he again expressed his disbelief about the effectiveness of protocols and procedures the church has put in place in recent years to address an institutional problem of child abuse.

He said he subscribes to the theory the church will never change and will remain protective of its priests regardless of whether or not they engage in criminal activity.

Marleau also said the time has come to victims to stop hiding in the shadows and come forward to authorities about any abuse they may have suffered as children.

“As hard as it is to come forward, it’s not as hard as living with this inside you,” he said. “It’s never easy, but it can get better.” Marleau said the inquiry’s work will hopefully serve to put an end to decades of rumours, innuendos and disbelief these horrific acts ever took place.

“The inquiry’s mandate is broad enough that the truth will come out,” he said. “It already is.”