Where to begin?
I haven’t managed to get near the Dunlop transcripts of last week. I will. It’s just taking a little longer to get there than I thought.
Note the postings for today on New to the Site on the Home page. Lots of them.
A few comments:
(1) 26 September 2007: Forgetting the male victims of child abuse
This is astounding. In and of itself what Barbara Kay has unearthed here is astounding. Not perhaps surprising. But astounding.
For those keeping an eye on the Cornwall Public Inquiry it is even more astounding than, at first blush, meets the eye.
Two “expert” witnesses at the Cornwall Public Inquiry lent a helping hand to this blatant discrimination against males in general and what I call ‘the boy child’ in particular.
(i) John Liston
According to it’s final report, John Liston was a member of the Task Force. On 15 February 2006 Mr. Liston was sworn in and qualified as “an expert in the child welfare response to allegations of child sexual abuse.” He continued his “expert” testimony 16 February 2006.
Liston has served as the former Executive Director of the London-Middlesex Children’s Aid Society (September ’85 to May 2005), former Assistant Executive Director of Children’s Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto (1979-1985), in the 70s served as Executive Director of the Big Brother’s of Metropolitan Toronto for “three or four years.” He has also been a guest lecturer at Kings College in the Law and Family Program in London, Bishop Eugene Larocque’s alma mater.
Liston authored “The Sexual Exploitation of Male Youth in London” and prior to retirement in 2005 spent a lifetime addressing the issue of child sexual abuse.
I believe Mr.Liston would, or should, be well aware that countless numbers of boys throughout Ontario are being and have been subjected to the horrors and shame of sexual abuse. He would, or should, have been familiar with the burgeoning sexual abuse scandal in Cornwall where victims are predominantly male, and the Alfred and Uxbridge reform school scandal where all victims were exclusively male.
But, Mr. Liston spent six years of his life hammering out a protocol which explicitly excludes males?
What’s going on here? Why would Liston feel that sexual abuse of boys/males doesn’t warrant scrutiny? Why? That’s the burning question, isn’t it?
(ii) Dr. Peter Jaffe
Dr. Peter Jaffe was sworn in on 22 February 2007 and qualified as “an expert in child sexual abuse and, in particular, in the institutional and community response to it.”
He is also a member of Justice Glaude’s Advisory Panel.
I will be posting more information on Dr.Jaffe,for now enough to say that has had extensive experience in the field of sexual abuse, most of it related to domestic violence. Like Liston, and for all the same reasons, he would or should know that boys have been and are sexually abused throughout Ontario at an alarming rate. And he would or should know that sexual abuse of a boy is akin to the rape of the boy’s soul, and that the impact of childhood sexual abuse on a boy is generally long-term and horrific.
But, Jaffe condones the explicit exclusion of males/boys from a sex abuse screening protocol? Boys aren’t worthy of protection? Men who endured childhood sexual abuse don’t warrant help? Just women?
As I said above, what is going on? What the heck is going on?
Why? Why would Jaffe allow this to happen? This blatant and deliberate bias and discrimination against males?
And these men helped Justice Glaude “frame” his inquiry?
Men discriminating against their fellow man? Blatantly!
Meditate on that. I certainly will…
(2) Claude McIntosh is at it again.
For years McIntosh has availed himself of any and all opportunity to stick a stiletto in one side of Perry Dunlop’s neck and out the other.
He’s at it again.
McIntosh I suppose is as entitled to his opinion as I. My problem here is that I don’t recall ever once seeing Claude McIntosh in an Ottawa or Cornwall courtroom . Not once. My opinions have been formed after many many hours testimony heard in several different courtrooms, from Ottawa to Cornwall, and after speaking to many victims and their families.
Since Claude McIntosh can’t possibly know the facts as they were entered into evidence, what I wonder has formed his anti-Perry-Dunlop opinions? Fellow parishioners at St. Columbans? Clergy?
Whoever has his ear, and whatever his motive, his animosity is palpable.
(3) The Wanderer
Roman Catholics in the United States have been keeping an eye on Cornwall for years. This article is hot off the press.
The Wanderer, you may recall, was one of the many parties sued by former Bishop Eugene Larocque and a number of priests. The Wanderer ran Storm Tossed House and paid dearly for doing so.
I don’t know that we will ever hear all the facts on The Lawsuit, but I certainly hope we will.
Speaking of which, James Bateman was at the Weave Shed courthouse coliseum last week. All the way from Waterloo, Ontario. To support Perry and Helen Dunlop. Another supporter granted ‘standing’! I don’t know if David Sheriff-Scott said a “Hello” to James He certainly would have recognized him. Thanks to The Lawsuit, they’ve gone toe to toe
The lawsuit was a tremendous strain, financially and emotionally, but James didn’t let it knock him out. Another warrior.
On that note, must get this posted and then on to my Jaffe files…
Enough for now,
Sylvia
(cornwall@theinquiry.ca)