Does anyone recall?

Hearings resumed at 0930 hours (9:30 am) this morning, Thursday, 09 October 2008.  Bryan Keough has resumed his testimony.  Geraldine Fitpatrick is supposed to resume her testimony tomorrow.  Her testimony was broken because her lawyer has religious commitments.

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The Dunlop family is together again!  Perry and Helen flew home to Duncan B.C. yesterday.  Tomorrow they and the three girls will head off for three days together, just the five of them. A Thanksgiving to remember.

Perry, Heather, Monica, Heather, Marlee – enjoy every golden moment together.  The love, thoughts and prayers of so many people around the world are with you 🙂

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I looked up Geraldine Fitzpatrick’s testimony regarding C-8.

C-8, you may recall, did not want to testify. He eventually testified in camera. 

We learned next to nothing of C-8’s testimony – it has been nigh to top secret.  What we did hear via the media was that C-8 presumably recanted his sex abuse allegations Father Charles MacDonald or said he couldn’t recall if he’d been abused by Charlie.

 Seems in fact that C-8 may have testified that he made up the allegations against Charlie because he wanted to please Perry.

And now, from Fitzpatrick, we learn that C-8’s sister was actually angry with her daughter because the girl reported that she was molested by her uncle!  Raped I do believe.  The child was raped by her uncle. 

And unbelievably we learn that C-8’s sister apparently excused the incestuous rape of her daughter because C-8 had been molested by Father Charles MacDonald on the day of their father’s funeral, and that C-8 had also been molested by a school teacher Marcel Lalonde!!!!

When exactly did this meeting between Fitzpatrick and C-8’s sister transpire?  I haven’t managed to sort it out yet but it would be tucked away in various transcripts of Cornwall Police Service testimony. 

According to Fitzpatrick’s testimony it should coincide with a report to the school board by Richard Abel about Marcel Lalonde which led to a call to the police station.  

Here are three relevant excerpts from Fitzpatrick’s testimony:

(1) MS. DALEY: Was that a widely held view? If someone came to you in ’92, alleged past abuse by a person in authority, you would take an interest?

MS. FITZPATRICK: Well, I can only refer the RMC case that I attended when I learned about historical sexual abuse of children by a schoolteacher, and when I presented that to the committee, Richard immediately got up on — got up, made a call to the Superintendent and to the police and the teacher was arrested that day.

(2) MS. FITZPATRICK: The story was an uncle had sexually abused his niece, so the worker that was investigating that needed some assistance because she felt that — she wasn’t sure she could leave the child in the home because the mother was angry at the child for disclosing the sexual abuse of the uncle.

(3) MS. FITZPATRICK: So I went to the home with the worker and in her defence the mother came out with — and said, “Well, what do you expect? My brother used to be an altar boy.” And she said, “The day that we buried my father, the altar boy,” who was her brother, “and Charlie MacDonald were in the back room, and Charlie MacDonald sexually abused him there.”

And so then when she came out with that —  and she said he had also been abused by a school teacher, and she gave the name of the school teacher. So the next day we’re sitting in the RMC committee discussing the case about the girl, what we’re going to do with her to set up her protection, and the reason why this happened is this is her uncle, and look what happened to the uncle.

(4) MR. LEE: … it sounds that obviously you had no — the uncle by this point was an adult?

MS. FITZPATRICK: Yes.

MR. LEE: So as a CAS worker, you’re not concerned about protecting him from an abuse — from this school teacher abuser at that point?

MS. FITZPATRICK: No, but there’s a school – that same school teacher is in a classroom with children as we speak.

MR. LEE: What year would this have been when you had that conversation at the meeting with Richard Abell?

MS. FITZPATRICK: Oh, God, when everything else was coming out, so what year would that be, 1994, ’95, in there.

According to his WillstatePerry first met C-8 in June 1996.   And according to the Willstate it was around November 1996 that C-8 disclosed to Perry that he, C-8,  had been abused by Father Charles MacDonald and Marcel Lalonde.

When did CAS pay that visit to C-8’s sister regarding the rape of her daughter?  Does anyone recall offhand?  I will start to look through transcripts when I can. 

Was it, as Fitzpatrick thinks, around 1994 or 1995?

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A point of interest.  In a December 2007 newsletter “The Field” Bryan Keough, now a pastor in Weyburn Saskatchewan, wrote: “Since I became a first generation Christian at the age of 24…”   Age 24 would be around 1973.  Keough was with CAS in Cornwall from 1971 to 1990.

Enough for now,

Sylvia

(cornwall@theinquiry.ca)