Cindy Burgess Lebrun

Victim Impact Statement

Below is the Victim Impact Statment prepared by Cindy Burgess Lebrun for the sentencing hearing of her molester, Jean Luc Leblanc.

Cindy prepared the statement with the understanding that she would be given the opportunity to read it in court to personally tell Leblanc how the sexual abuse had impacted her. For whatever reason, that didn’t happen.  Her Victim Impact Statement was read instead by the Crown Attorney.

Cindy had the opportunity to publicly read her statement into the record when she testified at the Cornwall Public Inquiry.  

By way of explanation, although Jean Luc Leblanc was charged in 1986 for sexually molesting her two brothers (Scott and Jody)and a friend (Jason Tyo) no one asked if she too had been abused. Leblanc, however, routinely sexually molested Cindy in front of her brothers and her brothers in front of her.  Because the boys weren’t asked by anyone about their sister they didn’t tell.   

When the Project Truth probe arrived in Cornwall to investigate allegations of a paedophile ring and a cover-up in the mid 90s they learned that Jason had been re-victimized while Leblanc was on probation – their investigation led them to Cindy who acknowledged that, yes, she too had been sexually molested as a child by Jean Luc Leblanc. Previous to that she had told no one about the abuse but her husband. 

Cindy was about 12-years old when the abuse began (an error in dates in the Affidavit indicates she was eight or nine. She testified at the inquiry that she was actually 12)

Victim Impact Statement 

Growing up, I watched my friends lead normal lives while I hid behind a wall of shame, guilt and fear. To this day, there is never any freedom for what this man has done to me. I must concentrate so hard to live in the world that he has created for me. If not, his face manages to creep up and take over the faces of the people I love. All these years, I cried when my husband made love to me because he invaded my thoughts, and even at those precious times.  

I resented a lot of people while I was growing up because I expected them to help me and though I had never said a word, I had hoped with all my heart that someone would read into my eyes and stop the awful things he was doing to me. I have nothing to gain here today other than freedom to try and live my life, knowing he cannot hurt someone else the way he hurt me. 

I might be able to walk down the street without the fear that he may be lurking somewhere in the shadows, and maybe someday the nightmares will turn into dreams and the fears will turn into comfort. No punishment will truly make it all go away until the day I visit his grave, knowing that he is facing the ultimate judge. That is the day I live for.  

Coming here after all these years was devastating for me. I had used the biggest shovels and the strongest dozers to bury all the haunting and degrading feelings that he had created in me. I had to bring them all forward again to remember, to relive and, most of all, to re-suffer. 

After 20 years, he managed to do it to me again. Seeing his face in the court brought back a bigger fear than when I was a child; the knowledge that I was now trying to hurt him by telling the truth just about me walking away because, unlike him, it is not in my nature to hurt someone else. Watching him pace the halls, he looked like the monster from my past, waiting to pounce on me at any opportunity. And the question that still remains unanswered and probably will always be is why? Why me? Why only partial truth about what happened? Why? I was only a little girl. That one word makes me cry because it makes me think of you. 

I feel so much pity for you, Jean-Luc. You had the power to teach me love instead of hate. You had the power to learn who I was instead of turning me into someone with no reason of being. 

I was a child full of love and you stole that from me and turned it into fear. You took something of no value to you but was the basis of my being. You destroyed it with no regards of consequences to me later in life. You took it, though you couldn’t see it yourself. I was too young to protect it and now I cannot find it anymore. 

That is what you did when you stole my pride. I know deep down inside of me what kind of person I really am, but who can I trust with such sensitivity after what you did to me? There are no words to truly reflect the pain, the  fears and the lifelong scars that you have put me through. If anyone here doubts that they are real, try walking in my shoes for just one day and maybe then you’ll understand better. 

I often wonder how far I would have gotten in my life if you had let me grow up normally. Maybe I would have become a famous lawyer or a well-known doctor. Instead I remain a shell of the person I could have been and all because of the hate and fear of people that you put inside of my heart and in my mind. 

Why would a nobody like me even try to be a somebody? You took away my future by killing my childhood. Is there a price attached to someone’s future? 

The life I have is only a shadow of what it could have been. My fear of people has stopped me from getting anywhere in my life. My fear of discussing it has stopped me from being free.