False allegations have hurt innocent people

Cornwall Standard Freeholder 

Saturday, June 30, 2007 - 08:00  

McIntosh, Claude


Local News - Back in the 1960s a young woman went missing in Cornwall.

Somehow a psychic in Holland got involved, claiming that the young woman had been raped and murdered and her body was stuffed under a porch in the city.

A manhunt was organized by the local radio station.

Hundreds of people scoured the city in search of a body.

The next day the truth was disclosed: it was a hoax.

The young lady had run off with her boyfriend.

Today, the city is dealing with an even bigger hoax . . . the biggest and most damaging hoax ever inflicted on this community.

It is also arguably the most expensive hoax the country has known.

We speak of the Cornwall Public Inquiry and its investigation into allegations that a clan of pedophiles, made up of mostly prominent citizens, operated with impunity.

According to the wicked tale, orgies were held in and around the city and involved young boys.

Some of these sadistic rituals had the young, naked boys paraded around in white sheets with candles inserted in their rectums.

The clan list, it was claimed, contained the names of priests, lawyers, probation officers, police officers and businessmen.

The allegation and names were contained in a affidavit sworn out by Ron Leroux, a Cornwall man, who claimed to have been a witness to the horrible activity.

On the witness stand this week, Leroux told a stunned inquiry that he had no knowledge of a clan of pedophiles.

He said he didn't know how some of the names got into his sworn affidavit.

The story was a hoax. It came from a book, he said.

Leroux, in an emotional prepared statement, said he came to the inquiry because he wanted to set the record straight.

He also alleged that Perry Dunlop, the self-described only-honest-cop-in-the universe, along with his wife, Helen, and her brother, Carson Chisholm, had hounded him to no end.

Dunlop, using the pedophile clan story as a backdrop, carved out an image as a crusader trying to write wrong.

No doubt we'll hear from inquiry officials that while it is sad that the pedophile clan story has been denounced as fiction by the author, it wasn't the only reason the multi-million dollar exercise was launched.

Bullfeathers.

Without the pedophile clan story, there would be no inquiry.

The admission that it was a fraud shot the wheels off the inquiry bus.

The story was the engine that drove the inquiry's creation by Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Hate to tell you this Dalton, and Michael Bryant (attorney general), but you've just wasted a lot of good money.

The tab, when the inquiry is finally put to bed late next year, will be in the millions . . . like maybe $40 million.

And for what?

A report by Judge Normand Glaude that will collect dust.

It won't change much when it comes to institutional response, because 1) most of the testimony is about how the institutions dealt with cases 20 or more years ago; and 2) much of the testimony by victims (as opposed to alleged victims) shows that in most cases police (city and OPP) response was more than reasonable.

The one area (and don't expect the judge to slam this one too hard) that hasn't changed is the way convicted sex offenders are punished. Many of the victims complained that their abusers received lenient sentences from judges.

What we should be having is a serious examination of the way a couple of law firms (a.k.a. ambulance chasers) handled affidavits.

The gentle rap on the knuckles administered by the kindly Glaude is not good enough.

The attorney general's office should also be looking at Glaude's decision to allow names of citizens who were never charged to be flung around by dubious alleged victims.

The decision created a second class of victims: people who had their reputations not just tarnished, but ruined.

It was a terrible decision, especially in light of Ron Leroux's courageous confession.

Some will disagree, but while Leroux is not the hero he wanted to become, he deserves credit for setting the record straight.

Glaude has bent over backward to make sure alleged victims were treated with kid gloves by the lawyers representing the institutions involved.

In one case, he allowed an alleged victim to shadow box with a lawyer trying to cross-examine him, then the next day scolded a lawyer for using adjectives he didn't think were proper.

The institutional lawyers were handcuffed from day one, but still managed to do a remarkable job.

The cross-examinations were, almost to a fault, gentle.

The lumbering inquiry will resume in August, and with the cross-examinations of Ron Leroux more veneer may be stripped off the conspiracy theory.

In the meantime, there are several people in this community who have lived through hell because of false allegations.

The inquiry has a healing mechanism for victims (and alleged victims) . . . and, of course, people who have had their lives shattered by bogus allegations.

Fine.

But perhaps Judge Glaude might like to tell the innocent folks whose names he allowed to be smeared in his courtroom where they can go to recover their reputations.

As one victim of the hoax, who says he has lived in hell for the last 10 years, said: "I've been ruined."