Quinn tried to warn pal Dunlop

Cornwall Police Service

23 April 2008

Posted By Trevor Pritchard

One of Perry Dunlop's closest friends on the city's police force warned him about the potential repercussions of taking an alleged victim's statement to the Children's Aid Society, the Cornwall Public Inquiry heard Tuesday.

"I told him, once this started, once things get beyond a certain point, there was no turning back," said Const. Michael Quinn. "And you best buckle up for the ride, because it's gonna get really, really rough."

Quinn spent 26 years with the Cornwall Police Service, and served on the executive of the Cornwall Police Association - the force's bargaining unit - before retiring in 2003.

Quinn testified Tuesday that he met with Dunlop in September 1993, a few weeks after Dunlop turned over the statement of abuse victim David Silmser to the CAS.

Silmser was allegedly abused by Rev. Charles MacDonald decades earlier when he was an altar boy. In 1993, he accepted a $32,000 payout from the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese in exchange for not laying charges against MacDonald, and police halted their investigation that September.

Quinn said Dunlop had come to him because he was worried about his job safety. Dunlop felt that certain high-ranking officers - including then-chief Claude Shaver and Luc Brunet, the head of the criminal investigations branch - had a "vested personal interest" that Silmser's case stay closed, Quinn testified.

"I believe Perry believed he would be the guy that's going to be the scapegoat," he told Citizens for Community Renewal lawyer Helen Daley.

Quinn, who was "probably" the police association's vice-president at the time, said he shared Dunlop's concern about potential discipline.

"I suggested he speak to no one until he got legal advice," Quinn said.

Dunlop would be charged in May 1994 under the Police Services Act for bypassing the chain of command and handing over Silmser's file. The charges were eventually dismissed.

Dallas Lee, an attorney for The Victims Group, called Quinn a "unique witness" because he was one of the few officers who had kept in constant touch with Dunlop.

Quinn said Dunlop grew increasingly "paranoid" in the years after Silmser's statement was leaked to the media - an act he strongly wished had never happened. "It just made his life abject misery," Quinn said.

"It was just like one more log on the fire."

Quinn also testified he knew little about a civil suit Dunlop filed in 1996 naming officers that belonged to the association.

But that testimony was "simply not tenable" given that Quinn was on the executive, said Michael Neville, MacDonald's lawyer.

When Comm. Normand Glaude asked how Dunlop's civil case was relevant to his own client, Neville explained he was trying to poke holes in Quinn's credibility.

"The man is the closest personal friend of Perry Dunlop (and) is suggesting to us and to you . . . that he had no knowledge of this lawsuit," Neville said.

Neville called Dunlop's suggestion that police brass wanted to keep the Silmser case closed "a startling statement," and asked Quinn if he ever challenged his friend's opinions.

"You took him at his word on all of that?" said Neville. "What he said you took as correct?"

"I took it on face value," Quinn responded.

Although Cornwall police did not charge MacDonald, the priest was later charged with a number of sex crimes by the OPP in 1996.

Those charges were stayed in 2002 when a judge determined they had taken too long to come to trial.

The inquiry will resume this morning when Const. Kevin Malloy returns to the stand.

In 1989, Malloy was assigned to the force's youth bureau, the unit responsible for handling historical sexual abuse cases.

Article ID# 997402  

Where is Mandatory Reporting in this farce?

Reply | Report | Page Top Post #1 By JungleLord,

NO ONE UNDERSTOOD THE LAW AND MANDATORY REPORTING EXCEPT PERRY.

INCRECDIBLE

Reply | Report | Page Top Post #2 By JungleLord