SQLFusion - Clerical sexual abuse victim Dick Nadeau, operator of Project Truth website, dead

Dick Nadeau is dead
Shortly after Dick Nadeau’s death I was asked by The Wanderer, a U.S.-based Roman Catholic weekly, if I would write a few words about Dick. I was happy to do so.
'PROJECT TRUTH' ADVOCATE DIES IN CORNWALL, WAS 66
The Wanderer, (11 May 2006)
by Sylvia MacEachern
CORNWALL, Ont. - Dick Nadeau, the controversial victim of clerical sexual abuse whose ProjectTruth.com web site alerted North Americans to the longtime operations of a pedophile clan here involving clergy, lawyers, police, probation officers and children's aid society workers in 2000, died April 19. He was 66.
As he lay in a hospital bed, fighting for each breath before being put on a respirator, his final words were: "What's going on in Cornwall?"
And that's the measure of the man who championed the cause of the male victims of sexual abuse in Cornwall and fought tirelessly and passionately for truth and justice in a community rocked by scandal and rife with allegations of a pedophile ring and cover-up involving prominent men in the community including Roman Catholic clergy, lawyers, probation officers, teachers, doctors and businessmen.
More than three years before the Boston Globe uncovered the unseemly clergy sex abuse scandal in Boston that led to similar revelations across the United States, Dick Nadeau began posting affidavits from both victims and perpetrators in the pedophile clan on the Internet, and thus, for the first time, began publicizing information that the local police, Ontario Provincial Police, crown attorneys, local justices and officials of the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall desperately wanted to keep hidden.
Dick's battle took it's toll - physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually. Physically his health plummeted after Jacques Leduc, the married lawyer and canon lawyer for the Alexandria-Cornwall diocese won a stay at his first sex abuse trial and it declined with each subsequent travesty of justice, and each betrayal which mark the Cornwall scandal.
Emotionally Dick lived and breathed Cornwall, an emotional roller coaster.
He was cited for contempt of court after he exposed a judge's conflict of interest during the Leduc trial. He, along with The Wanderer and James Bateman, were sued by the former Bishop of Alexandria-Cornwall, Eugene Larocque, and several diocesan priests - suits which were eventually dropped by the diocese to prevent discovery. He rejoiced at any meager sign that the truth was about to break loose. He despaired at every sign of cover-up, and over the treatment of every victim who was re-victimized by "the system," and for Perry Dunlop, the young Cornwall constable who first blew the whistle on the pedophile clan and the cover-up in 1994, was prosecuted for doing so, and then was run out of town, his reputation in tatters after lawyers and judges turned him into the villain and let "alleged" molesters "walk."
It was all too much for Dick to bear. Those close to him say it killed him.
Financially he spent every penny he had, and a lot he didn't have, on Cornwall. His phone bills averaged $500 per month - money he just didn't have. But he fought on, his health declining and sinking deeper and deeper into debt because he didn't want any young boy to endure what he endured, and because he couldn't conceive giving up the fight for truth ad justice.
His failing health and other external pressures forced him to give up the battle to take his suit against the Viatorians (Clerics of St. Viator) into the courtroom so the whole world would know what happened to him and other young men at the Cornwall Classical College run by the Viatorian priests.
He reluctantly settled out of court for a pittance. It paid the bills with little to spare.
Spiritually, he saw "the Church" as inseparable from the priests who molested him, the bishop and priests who sued him, the priests whom he believed eluded justice and the clergy whom he believed were tied into a pedophile ring. As the years went by and he watched the scandal unfold he became more and more adamant that no one deserved to be treated the way the victims were treated by "the Church" and that he would never again set foot inside a Catholic Church. He died with Buddhists at his bedside.
May this brave but tragic soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace.