4-Year Cornwall Child Abuse Inquiry Completed

Tag: canada

CORNWALL, Ontario Canada

A judicial inquiry into a suspected pedophile ring operating in Cornwall since the 1950’s concluded today, with the findings condemning the Roman Catholic Church, police and correctional services but failed to press formal charges against anyone.

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The inquiry was sparked after allegations of child sexual abuse by prominent Cornwall citizens surfaced. Ontario provincial legislators were concerned that the investigations were being neglected as key Cornwall citizens named as alleged abusers were never apprehended or questioned about the abuse.

Allegations first surfaced after a Cornwall man claimed he had been abused as an alter boy by a Catholic priest. As law enforcement began to investigate, the Church paid out a settlement of $32,000 to the man on the condition that the investigation be dropped. It was initially dropped, but new allegations continued to surface.

In 1997, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) set up “Project Truth” which was tasked with eliminating the problem of child sexual abuse and get to the bottom of these allegations. This task force made dozens of arrests which included prominent Cornwall residents, including lawyers, law enforcement officers and clergymen.

The inquiry, chaired by Normand Glaude, began in February, 2006 and has cost Ontario taxpayers $47 Million. Glaude stated in his report that Cornwall children who were sexually abused or at risk of being abused were sometimes further harmed by the authorities entrusted to help them.

“I find there were systematic failures in the response of institutions to allegation of sexual abuse of children and young people in this community,” Glaude said in a statement Tuesday.

“For some, this resulted in revictimization by the institution from whom they sought help. The response of institutions became a further source of harm.”

These institutions include the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, the Cornwall Community Police Service, the Children’s Aid Society, the OPP, the Catholic Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall, the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario and Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General.

Among Glaude’s recommendations to minimize the risk of further abuse and deal effectively with abuse cases in the future were that:

* Corrections officials and the Catholic diocese should do more rigorous screening of parole officers and priests.
* The Catholic diocese, Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services and the local school board should consider making a public apology to all confirmed victims of sexual assault or abuse by their employees; they should also make a public appeal, urging victims to come forward.
* Police should inform other public institutions about sexual abuse complaints made against their employees and the Ontario government should develop provincewide guidelines about when similar disclosures should be made among a wide range of institutions.
* Institutions should provide better training about sexual abuse and assault to employees who may deal with child abuse complaints.
* Sexual abuse complaints should be investigated in a more timely fashion by all institutions involved and more support should be offered to victims.
* All institutions should do a better job of taking notes and keeping good records of abuse allegations and investigations.

Commissioner Glaude also acknowledged that community members have paid a high price for this inquiry, and that it has not produced justice in the eyes of victims. However, he did take particular aim at the OPP and its Project Truth, which also failed to serve its purpose.

Glaude said he would not make a pronouncement on whether the ring existed. He did acknowledge that throughout the inquiry, he heard evidence suggesting there were cases of joint abuse and the passing of victims from one abuser to another, as well as possibly passive knowledge of abuse.

He criticized the OPP for the way it approached and communicated about the Project Truth investigation. He suggested Project Truth was a narrow, incomplete investigation of individual cases that could not have found out whether the ring existed because it did not look for those connections. He also suggested it was designed simply to disprove a theory of what happened that was brought forward by former Cornwall police officer Perry Dunlop.

And he said it was not surprising that the public was confused after police told the media that six men arrested in Project Truth were lifelong friends who shared victims, but there was no evidence of a pedophile ring.

He added that the Ministry of the Attorney General “fuelled public concerns” when it lost a binder of information about the case provided by Dunlop — an incident he said was “not acceptable.”

With respect to Dunlop, who served seven months in jail for refusing to testify at the inquiry, Glaude said the police officer was correct in blowing the whistle on the case that started the investigations in Cornwall and it was regrettable that he was disciplined for that, leading to a hard mistrust between Dunlop and public institutions.

“This distrust overwhelmed what I find was originally a genuine desire to be of help to children and young people,” he said.

In Toronto, Ontario’s Liberal government said Tuesday it was important to have held the public inquiry even though the rumours of a pedophile ring in Cornwall have not definitively been proven either true or false.

Attorney General Chris Bentley defended the $53 million that was spent on the four-year inquiry.

Bentley said the victims, their families and the entire community needed to be heard by someone who was there to listen just to them and to help stop such abuse from happening again.

http://patrickvaillancourt.ca/ethoughts/?p=615