23 January 2009     

Posted By TREVOR PRITCHARD

The Toronto Crown attorney who was initially given multiple Project Truth files defended her handling of those cases Thursday at the Cornwall Public Inquiry.

In the late 1990s, Shelley Hallett was given carriage of four Project Truth prosecutions and was also asked to provide legal opinions on five cases involving priests accused of sexually abusing children.

Yesterday, Ontario Provincial Police attorney Diane Lahaie took Hallett through those legal opinions, pointing out it took her between 13 and 17 months to get them completed while her successor, Lorne McConnery, only took two-and-a-half months.

Lahaie challenged Hallett on whether she fully understood how the reputations of those five priests - none of whom were ever charged - were affected by the rumours that were swirling in the community.

"The concern about rumours shouldn't short-circuit a full, thorough examination of the allegations," said Hallett.

"I thought that that kind of approach to those files would result in the best outcome for all persons involved."

Hallett's own lawyer, William Trudell, stepped in after Lahaie suggested the Crown should have considered that there were other men in Cornwall who'd committed suicide before their trials.

 "I think that we can all agree if we know someone is vulnerable to suicide . . . none of us would ignore that," said Trudell. "But there's no evidence here (that happened), as far as I understand."

Project Truth was the OPP's four-year investigation into allegations a clan of pedophiles had exploited children in the Cornwall area.  

Although they found no evidence a clan existed, Project Truth did lay 115 charges against 15 men.

One of those men was Jacques Leduc, a city lawyer who stood trial in 2001 on charges he'd sexually abused three teens who had worked on his property just outside the city.

The charges were stayed in 2001, however, after Justice James Chadwick ruled that Hallett had failed to disclose evidence showing the mother of one of Leduc's alleged victims had spoken about her son's story with former cop Perry Dunlop.

Meanwhile, Leduc's lawyer, Danielle Robitaille, suggested there were other oversights in the case relating to disclosure. The videotaped police statement of one of Leduc's other victims, taken in November 1999, was not turned over to the defence until March 2000, said Robitaille -just before a preliminary inquiry was set to begin.

Hallett said she was waiting for the final transcripts to arrive, without which the video would have been "meaningless."

"I wasn't in any way holding on to the video. I was providing it as quickly as I was getting it," she said.

Tempers flared late Thursday afternoon during Hallett's cross-examination, when she clashed with Ontario Provincial Police Association attorney Bill Carroll over her relationship with lead Project Truth investigator Pat Hall.

Carroll wanted to know why Hallett would have said words to the effect of "it's all news to me" during a meeting with Hall and Leduc's defence team after the mother's unexpected testimony came out in court.

After more than twenty minutes of wrangling, inquiry commissioner Normand Glaude brought an abrupt end to the proceedings.

"We're going to adjourn," said Glaude. "Because you're tired. I'm tired. We're going to start this (Friday) at 9:30."