I’ve posted the first in the series of documents: (1) 25 October 2004: Dunlop lawyer Yvonne Pink to Chief Superintendent Frank Ryder, Ontario Provincial Police, (2) 02 November 2004: Frank Ryder response to 25 October 2004 letter of Yvonne Pink, and, to put this all into more context, (3) 18 August 2004: Perry Dunlop handwritten note to Justice Platana after he realized he had been brought back to Cornwall under false pretenses to testify at the second sex abuse “trial” of Jacques Leduc.
Comments:
(1) Ten after seven in the morning! The OPP showed up on the Dunlop’s doorstep at 7:10 am!!
If he was a paedophile, fair enough. Or a murderer. Or a common criminal.
What can I say. An outrageous abuse of power!
(2) How much did it cost Ontario taxpayers to send two officers from Ontario to Vancouver Island to hand-deliver an Order of Production?
(3) These instance the harassment and intimidation of the Dunlop family here were preparatory to Jacques Leduc’s second “trial.”
Leduc, a married man, father, Cornwall lawyer and Roman Catholic Church canon lawyer “walked” claiming his Charter rights to a speedy trial had been violated. Perry Dunlop was pilloried in the Cornwall courtroom. Perry was the villain. What Leduc did or did not do to several young lads was irrelevant to Justice Platana.
Justice Platana was presumably brought in from out of town to assure locals of judicial impartiality and no repeat of the McKinnon trial fiasco. It is only in the past months that we have learned that Justice Platana is married to a Cornwall girl. His father-in-law, Rolland Dupuis, died in March 2007 at the age of 93.
Another to add to the growing list of judges with no connections to Cornwall 🙂
(4) Jacques Leduc acted for the diocese in orchestrating the David Silmser $32,000 pay-off. The pay-off contained an illegal clause: it obliged Silmser to tell Cornwall police that – after 10 months – he no longer wished to pursue criminal charges against Father Charles MacDonald.
(5) Justice Colin McKinnon took the bench at Leduc’s first “trial.”
Before he became a judge McKinnon routinely and for a number of years provided legal counsel to the Cornwall Police Service.
It was McKinnon who advised that Perry Dunlop be charged under the Police Services Act.
And it was McKinnon who advised the CPS appeal when Perry was exonerated by the Board of Inquiry.
Under the watchful judicial eye of McKinnon and Justice James Chadwick the sex abuse trial of Jacques Leduc degenerated into the trial and lynching of former Constable Perry Dunlop.
(6) Note Perry’s handwritten note to Justice Platana.
Perry returned to Cornwall in 2004 fully anticipating he had been called to testify about his benign contact with the mother of an “alleged” Leduc victim, the matter which saw the first trial degenerate into his trial and lynching in absentia.
He spent two merciless days on the stand. I believe I can say without fear that not one soul in the courtroom was interested in ascertaining Jacques Leduc had ever once laid a wayward hand on a little boy. The attack was on Perry, and it was vicious.
Perry had no lawyer. He had no idea what he was walking into back then. Nor did he have forewarning that it was he, not an “alleged” paedophile, who was on trial.
On occasion a beleaguered, confused and worn Perry gave answers which were obviously inaccurate but not a soul in the courtroom – Crown attorney included – attempted to set the record straight. When Perry asked for time to retain a lawyer to represent his interests, Platana turned him down. Perry was allowed a few moments with the duty lawyer. That was it.
A roasting.
The OPP officers showing up on the Dunlop doorstep at the crack of dawn were apparently an after to that travesty. Note that all the documents which they were so keen to get and were turned over were duplicates of all the documents which Perry had previously disclosed. I already had these posted on the site. I have now grouped them together.
And note most particularly the contents of Perry’s 29 September 2004: Sworn statement of Perry Dunlop in response to Justice Plantana’s Order of Production during the second and final sexual abuse trial of Jacques Leduc and the accompanying itemized list.
This then is a bird’s eye view of one little segment of the life the Dunlop family have been living for fourteen years. All because they tried to make the streets and sanctuaries safer for children. All because they did what no one else would do or cared to do, listen to the pain of male victims of childhood same-sex sexual abuse. They listened and they cared.
And look where the canons have been aimed ever since
Does all of this constitute harassment? I don’t think harassment begins to sum it up. It doesn’t come close.
Perry was subpoenaed under false pretenses. Outright deception!
Then he was savaged. Brutally, and presumably legally, savaged. The judge and every lawyer in the courtroom either participated actively in the savaging or twiddled their thumbs in silence.
Someday, and I pray it’s sooner than later, I do believe the Cornwall sex abuse scandal, the treatment of Perry Dunlop, the treatment of the victims, and this “inquiry” – the ultimate institutional non-response to allegations of sexual abuse – will go down as this once great nation’s greatest shame.
Anyway, that’s the first of the new postings on the Dunlops, who, as Helen has said, have been “forced, lied to, bullied and harassed” to take the stand at the “inquiry.” I’ll move on to the next. Less comment required so won’t take as long 🙂
So, more to come, and
Enough for now,
Sylvia