Cornwall's never-ending witch hunt

Toronto Globe and Mail

10 July 2007

MARGARET WENTE

Ever since the paper mill shut down, the blue-collar city of Cornwall, at the eastern edge of Ontario, has been struggling to diversify. The Wal-Mart distribution centre helps. But there's another big industry in town, one that seems in no danger of ever shutting down. That industry is Cornwall's notorious pedophile-ring scandal.

The scandal has cast a shadow over Cornwall ever since the first victim, a former altar boy, went public back in 1992. Then more accusers emerged to tell their sordid tales. According to them, the ring operated for decades and included several Catholic priests, as well as some of the most prominent men in town.

There have been at least three police investigations, each one dogged by cover-up allegations. The biggest of these, Project Truth, lasted four years and resulted in the conviction of just one person, a bus driver. None of the investigations found any evidence of a pedophile ring. In fact, the main victims of the sex ring were the innocent people who had been falsely accused.

Case closed? Not so fast. Local activists, litigation lawyers and a crusading MPP wouldn't let the story die. Finally, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced a public inquiry to probe the scandal yet again.

What Cornwall really needs is an inquiry to expose the power of the litigation industry and the media to launch a witch hunt at public expense. No such luck. Instead, the inquiry's premise is that the justice system and other institutions were callously indifferent to the victims' cries for help. A large part of its mandate is to promote "healing and closure" for the victims, even though many of their allegations have never been proved and no evidence of a pedophile ring has ever been found.

And so the inquiry has become yet another platform for trashing the innocent. A parade of victims have taken the stand to name local policemen, businessmen and priests in the pedophile ring that refuses to die. The fact that these people have never been convicted of a thing doesn't seem to matter. On top of that, the commissioner has cautioned lawyers for the institutions to go easy on the witnesses, so they won't be retraumatized.

Dallas Lee, a lawyer who represents 48 of the alleged victims, says it's important to name names, because they might have been connected through the pedophile ring. "It's perpetrator A, B and C and the fact that they had coffee every Sunday morning together that we need to know about."

"Anybody can get up and say anything they want," says Claude McIntosh, a local journalist. He has been scathingly critical of the inquiry, whose costs, footed by the taxpayer, have mounted into the millions. Since it opened in February of 2006, the inquiry has become a gravy train for lawyers, social workers, psychologists, experts in child sex abuse, healers of all stripes. "It's a very expensive form of group therapy," Mr. McIntosh says. And there's no end in sight.

There are other problems. As the witnesses recall events of 30 years ago, memories tend to blur. Some of them name people who weren't around. And two weeks ago, as the inquiry was about to take its summer recess, one of the key witnesses described how he had been pressed by victim advocates to stick to his story - which he then proceeded to recant.

Mr. McIntosh figures the bills for investigating the imaginary pedophile ring must now total more than $30-million. That doesn't count the human cost, of course; the other day, someone who had been named at the inquiry phoned him to describe how he had been cut off by close friends because, they said, they were afraid for their nine-year-old son.