Victims say sex abuse life changing

Terri Saunders

Wednesday, October 18, 2006 - 10:00

Local News - Every day for the past 40 years, Andre Lavoie has had a single thought on his mind - how to die.

In 1967, when he was just 15 years old, Lavoie was sexually assaulted by a teacher who would go on to abuse him repeatedly over a five-year period.

It was at the start of the abuse when Lavoie first began to imagine ending the assaults by ending his life, but it was one incident during a trip to Northern Ontario which crystallized his desire.

He and his abuser, Robert Sabourin, were driving to Timmins together when the teacher began performing a sexual act on the young boy. Lavoie, 53, told the Cornwall Public Inquiry Tuesday he thought about driving the car into the side of a cliff to escape the abuse.

"Not one day goes by without myself thinking about how to end the pain," Lavoie said. "The only solution I can think of is suicide. I am living with death."

Sabourin eventually pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a number of young people and was sentenced in April 1999 to two years less one day in jail.

Lavoie said he first met Sabourin when the teacher began encouraging him to learn about things such as photography and the arts, subjects which Sabourin taught.

Lavoie said he was, at first, receptive of the "singular attention" the teacher gave him, considering he got next to no one-on-one attention from his own father.

Meetings between the pair initially consisted of lessons on how to use a camera and other creative pursuits, but soon progressed to physical contact and sexual abuse.

Lavoie told the inquiry he has been living a "reign of terror" ever since he was first abused by Sabourin, and only survived because he managed to emotionally remove himself from the abuse when it was happening.

"I would remove my spirit from my body," he said. "I have faced the muzzle of a 12-gauge shotgun because some asshole took it upon himself to abuse me."

In March 1996, Lavoie contacted police to tell them what had happened to him in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

More than two years later in October 1998, Lavoie would provide the court with a compelling victim impact statement during sentencing arguments in Sabourin's case.

In the statement, Lavoie wrote about the effects the abuse has had on his life.

"My integrity was lost at the age of 15, taken by someone who, by design and deception, entered my life and proceeded to tear away at me," Lavoie wrote. "In the process, I lost all desire to love myself, and could not accept the love of others."

Lavoie wrote about how he lost his innocence, his right to a normal life and the privilege of defining his own persona because of the abuse.

"In my mind, to this day, a 15-year-old child screams in agony and solitary pain and defeat," he wrote. "It is the cadaver of my 15-year-old self; the tortured, haunting, stinking cadaver of a youth that was killed."

Lavoie told the commission his story is not unique and the community should prepare itself for the stories other victims are bound to tell as they take the stand.

"All those coming through here - if you touch on the suicide note, you will find we are all on the same page."

Lavoie's testimony continues today.
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