Cornwall Public Inquiry;

Met abuser in city courthouse

Cornwall Standard Freeholder
08 Novemebr 2006

Terri Saunders

Local News - When Albert Roy was 15 years old, he stole a car in Cornwall and took it on a joyride as far as Kingston.

He had a birthday in between that fateful day and the moment police officers showed up on his doorstep to charge him with theft.

He was 16 when he went to court and pleaded guilty to the crime, receiving 18 months probation.

Outside the courtroom was where Roy told the Cornwall Public Inquiry Tuesday he met Ken Seguin for the first time.

As a probation officer, it was Seguin's job to ensure Roy stayed on the straight and narrow and followed any court orders put in place on him.

That wasn't all Seguin did, Roy has said.

"He started to abuse me," said Roy, now a middle-aged man.

No criminal charges were ever laid against Seguin, who committed suicide in November 1993, but in 2000, several Cornwall-area men came forward and launched civil lawsuits against the province for abuse they said they suffered at the hands of Seguin and other probation officers, including Nelson Barque. Roy said he was also abused by Barque who was convicted of sex-related offences in 1995 and sentenced to four months probation.

Barque has since died.

Roy said, despite a vague memory of having possibly told a social worker in the early 1980s about the abuse, he recalls not disclosing details to anyone until an incident at Cornwall General Hospital in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Roy was hospitalized for three months and during his time in the facility, he had an encounter with a male nurse. Roy said he was struggling to come to terms with the fact his wife had left him, taking their pre-school-age son with her. He said he was angry and began acting out.

"He (the nurse) went to grab me to try to get me to settle down," said Roy, who cleared his throat often, paused frequently and often cast his eyes downward during his testimony. "I told him, 'Don't touch me. You don't have the right to touch me.'"

Roy said after he calmed down, the nurse implored him to talk about what was on his mind.

"I told him about what had happened," said Roy.

"What was his response?" asked Pierre Dumais, commission counsel.

"We talked a bit about how I had to deal with it (the abuse) before dealing with the separation from my wife," Roy said.

The inquiry continues today.