Warrants detail images on bishop’s computer

Documents say some naked boys appear younger than 12 

Halifax Chronicle Herald

Sat. Oct 17 - 4:46 AM

By EVA HOARE Staff Reporter

ELECTRONIC GEAR SEIZED

Some items confiscated from Bishop Lahey’s residences:

•HP Pavilion computer

•HP desktop computer

•D-Link USB wireless network card

•8-mm video camera

•Four 8-mm videocassette tapes

•Case with 11 CDs/DVDs

•Ricoh 35-mm camera

•Vodafone cellphone

•Nokia cellphone with SIM card

•SanDisk MP3 player

•MPIO MP3 player

•Four audio cassette tapes

•87 pages of computer printouts on domain name registrations

An image of a naked boy wearing only rosary beads was among those found on Bishop Raymond Lahey’s laptop computer, a search warrant has revealed.

The RCMP’s child exploitation unit obtained the warrant in order to search the bishop’s home in Antigonish and his apartment in Sydney. The document sheds more light on what Canada Border Services Agency officers found on the bishop’s computer after it was seized at the Ottawa airport on Sept. 15 as he was returning to Canada from overseas.

Bishop Lahey, 69, was charged Sept. 25 with possessing and importing child pornography. He resigned as bishop of the Antigonish diocese the next day.

Court papers state that the image of the "young, naked male" showed him wearing only "a set of black rosary and a set of white rosary beads around his neck." The boy appears to be nine to 12 years old, court papers say.

A number of other images of young boys were found on the bishop’s laptop, the documents say, and videos show "young males engaged in sexual acts."

One image allegedly depicts a young naked male who appears to be "hurt, as there are red welts and marks on his stomach and chest area."

"He looks sad in this image," the documents say.

The search warrant also alleges the bishop used the MSN Messenger service on the Internet to have sex-related chats with people he met online and "that the conversations are often sexual in nature." But the bishop told police he believed to the "best of his knowledge" that all the people involved in the talks were adults.

The RCMP say the images were found on his laptop in a folder called Downloads that contained 964 files. There were 33 videos in another folder, the court papers say.

None of the information supplied in the warrants and supporting paperwork has been proven in court.

The documents also state that on Oct. 9, the RCMP interviewed Shane Earle, who once lived at the Mount Cashel orphanage in St. John’s, N.L.

Mr. Earle, whose treatment at the orphanage in his teens led to a public inquiry, has said he saw child pornography at Bishop Lahey’s home in the 1980s when the clergyman was still living in his native Newfoundland.

Mr. Earle told police last week that he had spent some weekends and holidays at Bishop Lahey’s home in Mount Pearl, N.L., while he was a resident of the orphanage. He alleges he saw a "catalogue containing images of child pornography" during one of his stays at the bishop’s place.

"The images were of boys not older than 13 years old and that in some images the boys were sexually aroused," Mr. Earle told the RCMP.

Church officials in Newfoundland acknowledged before Mr. Earle’s Oct. 9 interview with the RCMP that little was done to help him in the ’80s after he told them what he had allegedly seen in Bishop Lahey’s quarters.

Last month, during the bishop’s conversation with a Canada Border Services Agency officer at the Ottawa airport, he indicated that "he had no time for child exploitation, no time for child pornography," the warrant states.

He said he had a computer at home and that it had the LimeWire file-sharing system installed, the documents say. LimeWire was not on his laptop, however.

On Tuesday, the RCMP carried out two searches in Antigonish, at Bishop Lahey’s residence and at his office, and one in Sydney, at Apt. 7 at 29 Xavier Dr., believed to be a home for retired priests.

They confiscated two computers in the Antigonish searches, and a lawyer for the Antigonish diocese told them that there had been a computer in the bishop’s apartment in Sydney, according to the search warrant.

Police were also told that the diocese had bought four computers for the bishop since August 2003, the court papers state.

Bishop Lahey told police in an Oct. 1 interview that he didn’t have a computer at his Antigonish home and he would use his laptop or a computer that office staff also used, the court papers state. But a housekeeper said she had seen two desktop computers there as recently as Sept. 22.

The bishop is free on bail and staying in Ottawa pending his next court appearance there on Nov. 4.

( ehoare@herald.ca)