Guzzo's tales unravel on stand

Cornwall Standard Freeholder

19 January 2008

Posted By McIntosh, Claude

Visions of a book on the alleged Cornwall pedophile ring danced through Garry Guzzo's head for the last dozen years.

He might still write the book, but it will have to move to the fiction section of the public library.

There was no pedophile ring. That has become a matter of record at the Cornwall Public Inquiry. Its alleged existence was denounced by the very person who fed the juicy story to former Cornwall police officer Perry Dunlop, who bought it hook, line and sinker, as did Guzzo, a retired judge who served two terms in the Harris government as a nondescript backbencher who had a poor working relationship with his boss, Mike Harris.

And for two days this week, Guzzo's claims of police incompetence and/or cover-up along with his claims of possessing hard evidence that the Cornwall ring was hustling young boys from Cornwall to a sleazy Fort Lauderdale motel, where they were "traded like baseball cards," were ripped apart by institutional lawyers.

Like the emperor in the Hans Christian Anderson classic, the naked truth emerged.

Time and again during a brilliant cross examination by David Sherriff-Scott, lawyer for the beleaguered Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall, Guzzo was forced to admit that "I was wrong."

Fact is, he was wrong on just about everything he claimed over the years.

Remember the alleged home movies, supposedly taken at one of the orgies involving the clan, and identified some of the clan members?

Remember Guzzo's announcement at the time that the OPP had destroyed those tapes . . . he actually said they had destroyed evidence.

Turns out he never saw those tapes.

He didn't know what was on them.

The man from whom the tapes were taken said the tapes were commercial movies purchased from a retail outlet. They showed adult actors engaged in sexual acts.

The OPP destroyed them when the owner didn't want them back.

To say Guzzo was rattled during his two days on the stand, particularly when grilled by Sherriff-Scott and Michael Neville, would be the mother of all understatements.

Sherriff-Scott dissected Guzzo's claims with all the precision of a skilled surgeon, while Neville was the relentless attack dog.

Using a series of letters penned by Guzzo and statements given in countless media interviews he gave over the years, Sherriff-Scott methodically took apart the wild allegations fed to the public . . . allegations that helped fuel the rumours that consumed the community and helped tarnish sterling reputations.

Guzzo had based his claims of police incompetency and/or their role in a cover-up on three pre-Project Truth investigations carried out by the Cornwall police, Ottawa police and OPP.

He never stopped pointing out that these investigations failed to turn up a single case, while later the OPP Project Truth probe laid more than 100 charges.

"How could they have missed all these cases?" he would tell anybody willing to listen.

Fact is, those investigations didn't miss anything.

What Guzzo didn't know, or care to find out, was that the pre-Project Truth investigations had nothing to do with an alleged pedophile ring. They were Cornwall police internal investigations.

And as Sherriff-Scott pointed out, press releases by the police bodies made that clear.

So why was Guzzo pushing the incompetent police/cover-up angle?

Sherriff-Scott suggested it was to stir up public opinion which in turn would put the heat on his peers at Queen's Park to support his private member's bill demanding an inquiry.

Guzzo, the lawyer charged, was on a mission to make the police look as bad as possible.

And when it came to the Fort Lauderdale allegations, Guzzo claimed to have registration slips from motels on "Pedophile Alley" that contained the names of Cornwall men and their boy toys from Cornwall.

Under cross-examination, it became clear he didn't have a nanogram of evidence linking a pedophile ring and young Cornwall boys to the Fort Lauderdale motels.

"You can't identify anybody who was taken to Florida . . . can you?' challenged Sherriff-Scott.

"I haven't got a name," said a somber Guzzo. "To be honest, I don't even have a picture (in my mind)."

Incredible. The man who over the years sold a gullible public (and media) on the sordid tale of boys from Cornwall being abused by pedophiles from Cornwall in Fort Lauderdale motels can't name one of the alleged victims.

And on and on it went.

Guzzo's greatest publicity stunt might have been one he confessed to being a stupid move.

At the height of the pedophilia scare that gripped this community, he announced that he would read out names in the legislature of people who should have been charged by police for sexually abusing young boys.

Guzzo gave numerous media interviews in which he said he had no choice but to read out the names in the legislature. He saw it as the only way to prod the police into laying charges.

At the appointed hour, with the eyes of the media on him, he "chickened out."

One of the names leaked was Bishop Eugene LaRocque. Guzzo denied having anything to do with the leak.

On the witness stand Tuesday, Guzzo said he never intended to read out the names.

He claimed he was just "toying" with Premier Mike Harris.

If this is true, then Guzzo played the media (and the public) for suckers and caused a group of innocent city residents, some of them good priests, undue mental anguish.

Sadly, the out-of-town media who over the years filled their pages and air waves with stories of the Cornwall clan and dastardly deeds in Fort Lauderdale are ignoring the inquiry, a source of frustration to all involved with the inquiry.

Complaints should be filling the Press Council's mailbox.

At least one of the innocents caught up in this callous charade continues to struggle with mental and physical pain.

He's a ruined man.

But in Garry Guzzo's world, this might just be unfortunate collateral damage.

He doesn't regret a thing.

In fact, he pats himself on the back. "I'm proud of the fact this (inquiry) is going on . . . if I lift a cloud off this city, then I've had a positive effect."

Sorry Garry, we disagree.