17 December 2008

Posted By TREVOR PRITCHARD

Former Tory MPP Garry Guzzo slumped in his chair and apologized for slandering the Project Truth investigation after a 2000 visit by two OPP officers, the Cornwall Public Inquiry heard Tuesday.

But that didn't stop Guzzo - a one-time judge and strong believer that a clan of pedophiles existed in the Cornwall area -from further criticizing the OPP as he made his pitch for a public inquiry, Deputy Commissioner Chris Lewis testified.

"Our own people were tired of being beat up in the media by Mr. Guzzo," said Lewis, who spent his first day on the stand yesterday. The long-running inquiry is looking into how institutions like the OPP handled complaints of historical sexual abuse.

From 1997 until 2001, Project Truth investigated allegations that a pedophile clan had at one time preyed on children in and around Cornwall.

Lewis's involvement in Project Truth began in 2000, when he was promoted to head up the OPP's criminal investigations branch.

In October 2000, after Guzzo made a number of comments slamming the OPP, Lewis and Det. Insp. Pat Hall, Project Truth's lead investigator, paid him a visit at Queen's Park.

The OPP believed some of the statements Guzzo was making to the public were untrue - such as the claim the force had investigated and concluded as early as 1994 there was never any pedophile clan.

"I was really gearing up for a media strategy. I wanted to get the facts out, as opposed to the misinformation," Lewis told commission counsel Pierre Dumais.

"He was slumping in the chair the more Pat Hall explained the facts, as opposed to what he was saying," Lewis said. "At the end, he apologized."

But by January 2001, Guzzo was once again blasting the OPP in the media, claiming they had found no evidence of a ring in 1994 and were now laying 115 charges against 15 men.

That, wrote Lewis in a Jan. 14 e-mail to Hall, was "the last straw." He accused Guzzo of "bad-mouthing us and saying things that are untrue" and, in a second e-mail that same day, called for a press conference to clear the air.

Lewis also wrote he was facing some resistance from the regional director of Crown attorneys, James Stewart, who felt a press conference could have negative results on Project Truth cases already before the courts.

"I like Jim Stewart, but I don't buy it," wrote Lewis. "In my view, the Crown is worried they'll look bad in this thing, due to the delays we'd been put through."

At the time, Project Truth was still waiting for opinions from the Crown's office as to whether it had enough evidence for some of its suspects to go to trial, Lewis said.

The OPP did eventually hold a press conference in August 2001, announcing its investigation was complete and that there was no proof a pedophile clan existed.

Lewis, who became the OPP's deputy commissioner in 2006, also vowed yesterday that the force was not waiting for the inquiry's final report to improve how it tackles sexual abuse crimes.

He said more than 100 detectives in the OPP's eastern region - which stretches from the Ottawa valley to Kingston to the Quebec border - are now trained in sexual assault investigations.

"We would not have another Project Truth-type investigation (where officers would not) have received all the appropriate training and meet adequacy standards," Lewis said.

Lewis added that changing policing standards, evolving technologies, and new leadership had made the OPP of 2008 a "completely different organization" than it was during Project Truth.

"You can't look at the organization that existed then, and compare it to the organization that exists now," Lewis said.

Lewis began testifying after Hall completed his 10th and final day on the stand yesterday morning. The deputy commissioner returns to the witness box when hearings resume today at 9:30 a. m.