The chronicleherald.ca

Mon. Nov 2 - 4:46 AM

By EVA HOARE Staff Reporter

IT’S A CONVERSATION Del Boudreau won’t soon forget.

An old school chum who’d just learned that Mr. Boudreau had been molested for years by their parish priest back in Wedgeport reached out to him for a chat.

The man told Mr. Boudreau that he used to regret repeatedly being passed over when Rev. Adolphe LeBlanc walked down the aisles in school, picking out potential altar boys.

"But he never picked me," the man told Mr. Boudreau. "I’d go home crying."

Those days were the beginning of horror for Mr. Boudreau and other schoolboys who had the "honour" of being singled out by Father LeBlanc.

Mr. Boudreau and lots of other young altar boys well knew not to go against the power of the village priest.

"They were more than God," says the retired insurance company owner. "You can’t explain . . ."

Now Mr. Boudreau, his brother Ken and a host of others are suing the Roman Catholic dioceses of Halifax and Yarmouth for sexual abuse at the hands of Father LeBlanc, who is now dead. They kept quiet about the abuse for decades, a testament to the church’s cold grip.

Now they’re speaking out, trying to explain the culture of secrets that shrouded their rural Yarmouth County village of 1,800 and numerous other places in Nova Scotia.

"You gotta go back to that time, the early ’60s, late ’50s, where in these French Acadian parishes, the church was so strong," Mr. Boudreau said in a recent interview.

"We figured there were about 40 to 50 kids (all boys) in my village" who were abused.

They had no television back then and they were isolated from the rest of the world. There was just the church.

"You went to church. You went to school," Mr. Boudreau said. "You had religion in the school, you were taught by nuns up till high school. That was the life."

The abused boys weren’t seen as weak by their peers, but they were powerless against a priest who controlled their lives and a devout village of residents who worshipped the cleric.

"Men that are tough, strong, rough, they talked to me (years later). They would never dare go public to save their lives," Mr. Boudreau said, his voice thick with frustration.

"It took 50 years for all these events to come out."

Philip Latimer likely feels the same way.

He launched a $2-million lawsuit against the dioceses of Halifax and Antigonish in mid-October, spelling out in court documents his fears of a priest he was continuously told was a flawless agent of God.

Mr. Latimer was taught "that priests are God’s chosen representatives on Earth and have special powers, and that priests are to be viewed with special reverence, power, respect, honour and authority," his court papers state.

The all-encompassing power of the church was not to be questioned, nor were the actions of the priest, his lawsuit says.

"Church is supreme’

"The diocese taught the plaintiff, as well as other Roman Catholics, the following: that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true religion and is the representation of God’s true teachings on Earth; that the authority of the Roman Catholic Church is supreme; that by following the rules, principles and ideologies of the Roman Catholic Church one will gain the right to go to heaven, and that by failing to follow same, one will not go to heaven and will go to hell," the documents state.

Mr. Latimer believed his "soul was in jeopardy" if he didn’t obey his abuser, Rev. Allan MacDonald, who has since died. (Neither case involving Mr. Boudreau or Mr. Latimer has been proven in court.)

The fear of the village priest wasn’t restricted to altar boys. Even some of Wedgeport’s young girls would cower when they saw Father LeBlanc’s black car coming down the street.

One time, Mr. Boudreau remembers, the girl who is now his wife and her friends were wearing trousers instead of dresses while riding their bicycles, and they feared the priest would see them.

"So they would hide in the ditch when they saw that black car coming down the road. That’s how powerful (he) was."

It’s easier for an authority figure like a priest to sexually victimize children, says psychologist Cliff Seruntine, who has worked with sex offenders and has a private practice in Antigonish.

"There can be a cultural aspect . . . the family and community basically want to bury what happened," said the psychologist, who also does consulting work in other Nova Scotia towns.

"You have somebody who’s already in a position to be respected. It’s that much easier for them."

And the overriding belief that men of God are immune to flaws can lock down the secrets of the abuse for good.

"It’s unwise, dangerous to your soul, to question people who work for God," Mr. Seruntine said, recounting religious teachings not unlike those that Mr. Latimer learned.

"Even bringing the attention to matters of authority . . . could be dangerous in terms of your spiritual life, but it also made your life in the real world very difficult too."

Predators "groom’ victims

Mr. Seruntine said predators "groom" their victims, and since children are taught to believe that adults are "smart" and "have their best interests" in mind, it’s easy to see why sexual abuse victims remain silent.

That’s how Mr. Boudreau felt for more than half a century. The shame, the guilt, and finding ways to shut out the pain all that time were sometimes more than he could stand.

He originally sought solace in alcohol. He’s now been sober for 28 years, but he says it’s not hard to understand why he thought liquor was the answer.

"Why do you think 85 per cent of us turned to the bottle? . . . It eases the pain," he said. "It was something to take away the pain, it’s the guilt, the pain, the embarrassment. You question yourself. We all had lots of trouble."

Mr. Seruntine, who had a childhood friend who was sexually abused by a priest in Louisiana, said sexual abuse victims generally have enormous amounts of anger, even years after the abuse has passed.

"It’s not uncommon to have victims . . . yelling and screaming (at the psychologist)."

The majority of sexual predators rarely reform themselves, he said. And these "masterful" manipulators, brimming with charisma, often fail to see that they’ve done anything wrong.

"Some really don’t understand (what’s) the big deal," he said. "They think the kids had a good time."

Mr. Boudreau’s truth about Father LeBlanc’s abuse was buried so deep that he even allowed the priest to officiate at his wedding.

"At that time, I didn’t tell my wife," Mr. Boudreau said. "He was the parish priest, what was I going to say, ‘I don’t want him to marry (us)?’ They’d say, ‘Why?’

"Even if we had told our parents (back then), what the heck could they have done? Would they have gone to the bishop? It just wasn’t done."

Mr. Seruntine understands that point of view.

"There’s tremendous pressure within that community that the church is right . . . that the church can’t do wrong," he said.

So Mr. Boudreau, like many other victims, turned the burden inward and went on with his life as best he could.

His brother ultimately became a pastor, but Mr. Boudreau said he himself is no longer a member of the Catholic Church.

"If I got anything to do with God, I do it directly," he said.

And he has a message for anyone else who has suffered from abuse.

"Never, never forget, it wasn’t your fault," he said.

( ehoare@herald.ca)

Yahoo News Canada

Wed Oct 14, 4:15 PM

By Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press

 HALIFAX, N.S. - The Roman Catholic Church has filed court documents denying that it created an environment that led to the alleged abuse of young boys by a priest in southwestern Nova Scotia in the 1940s and '50s.

In separate statements of claim filed earlier this year with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Kenneth Joseph Boudreau and Raymond Boudreau allege they were abused as children by Rev. Adolphe LeBlanc - who died 35 years ago - in two small parishes.

They allege their abuse began in their small village of Wedgeport in the Yarmouth area in the 1950s.

A third statement of claim has been filed on behalf of a man identified by the initials H.W.M., a former altar boy in Salmon River, N.S. He claims he was abused starting in 1945 when he was 14.

None of the allegations in the lawsuits have been proven in court.

Kenneth and Raymond Boudreau - who are not related - held a news conference in January to discuss their lawsuits against the church.

The archdiocese of Halifax and the diocese of Yarmouth filed statements of defence dated Oct. 5 in all three cases.

In each instance, the defendants "neither confirm or deny" the allegations of abuse, saying the church has "insufficient knowledge" of what occurred.

However, the church refutes arguments made by the plaintiffs that it bore some responsibility for sexual abuse by a priest, or that it knew at the time that LeBlanc "had a propensity to engage in deviant behaviour."

In the suit brought by Kenneth Boudreau, the statement of defence says the church "denies that it was responsible for the training of LeBlanc."

"The diocese of Yarmouth denies that it created an opportunity for LeBlanc to exert power or authority over the plaintiff ... and states that it fostered nothing but an appropriate environment for members of the Roman Catholic Church," says the statement of defence.

The church says if LeBlanc did commit abuse, then it was "his independent act for which he is solely responsible in fact and law."

In their statements of claim, Kenneth and Raymond Boudreau allege they were abused while LeBlanc worked in Wedgeport.

The abuse involving Kenneth Boudreau - who lives in Ontario - allegedly began in 1958 when he was 11.

Raymond Boudreau, who still lives in Wedgeport, alleges in the statement of claim that the abuse began in 1955 when he was 11 and lasted at least four years.

The plaintiffs are seeking $2 million each for pain and suffering, mental distress and exemplary and punitive damages.

NovaNewsNow.com

The Yarmouth County Vanguard

Article online since August 17th 2009, 9:15

By Tina Comeau

The Vanguard

NovaNewsNow.com

The civil lawsuits of men, who say as boys they were abused by a parish priest, are trudging along, despite the fact that in the seven months since the first statements of claim were filed with the Supreme Court, the dioceses named in the actions have yet to file statements of defence.

“We’re not slowing down our case at all waiting on the defence,” Aaron Lealess, an articling clerk with the law firm Ledroit and Beckett said in a recent interview. “A lot of time has passed but statements of defence don’t really say much. Usually…they can get away with some as simple as a very short statement saying, ‘We deny everything set out in the claim.’”

The Ontario law firm, which specializes in cases of victims of sexual abuse, is representing 11 men who say Father Adolphe LeBlanc abused them. Father LeBlanc was a parish priest in Wedgeport from 1955 to 1964. Other parishes he was assigned to included Amherst, Salmon River, Comeau’s Hill and St. Ambrose. LeBlanc died in 1971.

In January two men went public – Wedgeport resident Raymond Boudreau and former Wedgeport resident Kenneth Boudreau – saying they were abused by the priest when they were altar boys. A week later Kenneth’s brother Del Boudreau broke his silence about the abuse he too says he suffered. Others have come forward too but have chosen to remain anonymous. Individual civil suits claiming $2 million for each victim have been filed against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax and the Diocese of Yarmouth.

The men, now mostly in their 60s, say shame, embarrassment and fear kept them from coming forward when the alleged abuse was happening. As they grew older – and they were still haunted by the abuse – many never told their families. But as the saying goes, there’s strength in numbers. Watching others come forward has given them the strength to speak out to right a wrong, to shed light on childhood abuse and to change how these matters are handled by the church.

Lealess says they’ve been gathering medical, educational and employment records on each person.

“In the court process anytime there is a law suit each side exchanges their affidavit of documents, which is all the records they have,” he says. “For us to get the records of the diocese on Father LeBlanc and on their protocols or any procedures that they had for sex abuse prevention, we have to exchange our documents for our clients.”

The exchange of documents is followed up with a question and answer session for each side. Asked what the firm expects to receive, Lealess says they don’t know for certain.

“What we’ve seen in other cases is they usually have letters of the priest’s ordination and letters from seminary that talk about the performance of the priest,” he says. “In some cases where a priest has been caught and moved to another parish they don’t say exactly what happened. They use euphemisms and beat around the bush a little bit so we don’t often find anything too alarming, but it is good to track down where the priest was.”

Meanwhile, earlier this month the Antigonish Diocese announced it would fund up to $13 million to compensate anyone who was sexually abused by a priest that was a member of that diocese. The announcement came in response to a class-action lawsuit that had been filed.

"I want to formally apologize to every victim and to their families for the sexual abuse that was inflicted upon those who were entitled instead to the trust and protection of priests,'' said diocese Bishop Raymond Lahey. The settlement has to be approved by the Supreme Court during a September hearing.

Lealess notes with a class-action lawsuit such as the one in Antigonish, there is one large set dollar amount that is divided up among all of the victims who join the suit.

In the cases involving allegations against Father LeBlanc, his firm has opted instead to file individual lawsuits for each victim.