Ottawa Sun

19 January 2008

By ELISABETH JOHNS, SUN MEDIA

CORNWALL -- The only man ever convicted in the Project Truth investigations has been ordered to remain in prison because of his likelihood to reoffend.

Jean-Luc Leblanc, 63, was up for statutory release after serving two-thirds of his eight-and-a-half-year sentence.

He remains eligible for parole on Oct. 21, 2010.

In a ruling handed down by a panel of National Parole Board members, Leblanc was ordered to remain in detention.

The panel board determined that if Leblanc was released he would commit a sexual offence involving a child.

He was charged with a total of 48 sex abuse charges against 12 boys and one girl. He pleaded guilty to 18 of the 48 counts in 2001 and started serving his sentence in April 2002.

Leblanc, whose case will be up again for review this November, has told his case workers that he still believes that "pedophilia is love for children."

INQUIRY CONTINUES

He was the first and only person convicted out of the Ontario Provincial Police's Project Truth unit. Between 1997 and 2001, Project Truth investigators laid 115 charges against 15 men.

Meanwhile, OPP lawyers have won an appeal decision to prevent the judge heading the Cornwall public inquiry to hear evidence of two witnesses.

Three Ontario Court of Appeal judges ruled yesterday that Commissioner Normand Glaude "exceeded his jurisdiction" by trying to hear the evidence of a woman who alleged she was raped as a teen.

Lawyers for the Ontario Provincial Police argued that Glaude should not be allowed to hear the woman's evidence, or that of her mother, because it does not fall within the inquiry's mandate to examine how public institutions responded to historic allegations of abuse.

The matter went to the Ontario Divisional Court in September, where two out of three panel judges agreed the commission should hear testimony from both the woman and her mother.

The woman, known as C-12, alleged she was raped by two teenage boys in 1993. She said she reported it to police officers in Alexandria and claimed she was intimidated, improperly questioned and not taken seriously. She further alleges evidence collected as part of sexual assault examination was lost.