The Ottawa Citizen (This article also appeared in the Ottawa Sun)
Published on: March 30, 2016 | Last Updated: March 30, 2016 3:21 PM EDT
They were altar boys mostly aged nine to 11, given a gold star each time they attended mass, and sometimes invited to see Rev. Jacques Faucher in private.
Let’s practise a prayer, he’d say to one. Let’s watch a hockey game, he said to another. To a third: Let’s look at my stamp collection.
Then he would sit them on his knee and start touching them. On at least some occasions he became sexually aroused.
Faucher, 79, was convicted Wednesday of six counts of indecent assault and gross indecency, all involving young boys from the former Notre-Dame-des-Anges parish near Tunney’s Pasture. The charges date from 1969 to 1974, when Faucher was a priest there.
He was convicted of molesting three of five boys who testified against him. Judge Pierre Roger acquitted him on charges involving two other boys, not discounting their stories but saying there was a reasonable doubt.
“I wanted to have the most stars. I loved going to mass, but that changed dramatically,” one of the victims said outside court after the decision. (By court order, none of the victims can be publicly identified.)
“We were all emotionally abused. The emotional scars still last today,” he said. “At least for me I can put it to rest a little bit,” but he worries that the two men whose testimony did not lead to convictions will still suffer.
“I had one event (assault), and I’ve been battling it all my years, and I thought I was alone,” the man said. “People say, ‘Why don’t you talk to your friends?’ and it’s the kind of thing where, especially at that time, the priest is the pillar of society.
“So you don’t talk against the priest. So I couldn’t alert my friends, they couldn’t alert me, we just didn’t talk.
“So you feel alone for 40 years, right?”
He had decades of flashbacks that would come out of nowhere at times. Other times, he would read or hear a news story where someone said something kind about Faucher. He would feel the hate boil up, though it didn’t show on the outside.
“I’m known as a very happy and relaxed and smiling person.”
Even in later years when there were news reports of pedophile priests he kept silent. He told himself: “It’s one event, so many years ago … All the heartache I’m going to go through for that one thing — it didn’t seem to be worth it.”
Then three years ago he learned that one man from Notre-Dame-des-Anges had gone to the police, and that Faucher had been charged.
“I said to myself, well, I’d better come forward to help this other guy.
“And from that point on, it’s the point when I stopped thinking about it. And that was my release, when I could see that I was not actually alone, and that I could talk to people. I started talking to my father, my mother, my family and friends. And now it’s just a matter of due course to make sure he gets what he well deserves.”
Faucher will undergo a psychiatric examination before he is sentenced.
The five complainants all told much the same story. The priest would invite them inside and have them sit on his knee. He would rub their backs and shoulders, but didn’t touch their genitals. Some of the boys later reported they could feel that he had an erection, but others did not.
Some reported one occurrence, others four to five.
Faucher didn’t testify at the trial, but court heard that he admitted to police that he had been sexually excited in these encounters, and sometimes ejaculated in his pants.
The victim said in the interview that he himself is doing well, but one of the four others has had a difficult time with alcohol and drugs. That man was the first to go to the police, but the judge acquitted Faucher on those counts.
“I’ve never gone to church since that time,” said the victim in the interview, “and I used to go to church all the time.
“I’m not a believer any more.”
A statement from Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast says the archbishop has extended “indefinitely” an order he made when Faucher was arrested in 2013. This suspends him from all ministry and prohibits him from representing himself as a Catholic priest.
_________________________________________
Former Gatineau priest Jacques Faucher found guilty of sexually assaulting 3 boys
‘I wasn’t alone for these 40 years. I thought I was,’ victim says
CBC News Posted: Mar 30, 2016 12:35 PM ET Last Updated: Mar 30, 2016 1:10 PM ET
Jacques Faucher has been found guilty of six counts of gross indecency and indecent assault involving three boys he molested in the early 1970s.
Former Roman Catholic priest Jacques Faucher, of Gatineau, Que., has been found guilty of sexually molesting three choir boys in the 1970s.
Faucher was retired in 2013 when Ottawa police laid 14 charges of indecent assault and gross indecency against him. The offences were alleged to have involved five victims and occurred between 1969 and 1974.
On Wednesday, in an Ottawa courtroom, Justice Pierre Roger found Faucher guilty on six of the 14 charges involving three of the five victims.
One of the three victims, who cannot be named due to a publication ban, was in court for the verdict.
‘I wasn’t alone for these 40 years’
“It’s mixed feelings today. I feel good because Faucher was found guilty of the accusations [involving] me, but also a little empty because two of the five of us who went forward, he was found not guilty for them,” the man said.
He said one of the other two alleged victims was the reason he came forward to police in the first place.
“I wasn’t alone for these 40 years. I thought I was. And suddenly, these people that I was friends with at 11, 10 and 12 years old, they were suffering the same things I was … and I wasn’t aware.
“I didn’t come forward for 40 years because it was one time, and I figured talking against a priest probably wouldn’t get me anywhere. But people have to realize that these things don’t happen in isolation.”
Justice Roger told the other two alleged victims Wednesday that just because Faucher was found not guilty of the eight other charges involving them, doesn’t mean the assaults didn’t happen. But from a legal perspective there was reasonable doubt, Roger said.
Faucher served at 4 parishes, taught at schools
Ordained in 1960, Faucher served at four parishes before retiring: Notre-Dame-des-Anges, Saint-Louis-Marie-de-Montfort, Sainte-Jeanne-d’Arc and Christ-Roi.
He taught at the Grand Séminaire as well as several high schools, and served as a French language consultant, according to his profile with the Archdiocese of Ottawa.
The Archdiocese of Ottawa issued a statement Wednesday saying that in light of the conviction, Faucher’s suspension from the ministry and prohibition from representing himself as a priest will continue “indefinitely.”
“I invite the faithful to pray with me that justice may be done and that healing and reconciliation will come to the victims,” Archbishop Terrence Prendergast is quoted as saying.
The archdiocese also repeated part of its statement from 2013, when the charges against Faucher were first laid:
“Our diocese is committed to creating a safe environment in the church for minors and other vulnerable persons. We are also committed to a process of justice and reconciliation for the victims of clergy abuse,” Prendergast is quoted as saying.
_______________________________________
Former Ottawa priest Jacques Faucher convicted of historical sex crimes on children
The incidents involving children in the former Notre-Dame-Des-Anges parish date back from 1969 to 1974.
Ottawa Metro
A former Ottawa priest was convicted Wednesday of molesting three altar boys who came forward to police more than 40 years after their abuse.
Jacques Faucher was the priest at the Notre-Dame-des-Anges parish in west Ottawa in the 1960s and 1970s at the time of the incidents. He was charged in February 2013, after five men reported being molested between 1969 and 1974.
The judge heard testimony from the five complainants, now in their 50s.
The judge convicted Faucher, 79, of six counts of indecent assault and gross indecency in relation to three of the complainants, but acquitted him of charges relating to two of the men.
All of their evidence, however, told a similar story, according to the judge’s written decision.
Faucher would invite the boys into a private room, sit them on his knees, and rub their upper bodies. Their names are protected by a court-ordered publication ban.
Some told police they could feel Faucher’s erection in his pants, while others did not.
One boy, who was 10 years old at the time, said Faucher rubbed his back underneath his shirt and could hear him panting.
At trial, the Crown prosecutor argued that Faucher used the kids for his own sexual gratification and they had no motivation to fabricate their stories, according to the decision.
The accused argued that the witnesses’ evidence is “not reliable” since the allegations date back to 1969.
Rev. Terrence Prendergast, Archbishop of Ottawa, released a statement following the guilty verdict Wednesday, saying he suspended Faucher from all ministry immediately after he was charged and that the suspension will continue “indefinitely.”
“Our diocese is committed to creating a safe environment in the Church for minors and other vulnerable persons. We are also committed to a process of justice and reconciliation for the victims of clergy abuse. Further, we follow the requirements of Canon Law and the most recent procedural requirements of the Vatican requiring that cases of the abuse of minors by priests be reported to offices of the Vatican,” he said in the statement.
“I invite the faithful to pray with me that justice may be done and that healing and reconciliation will come to the victims.”
Faucher is expected to be sentenced at a later date.
It breaks my heart to see that the judge determined that there was a reasonable doubt on the charges related to two of the complainants. I wasn’t there to hear the testimony so have no idea what happened, but I do know how difficult it is for victims when a judge rules ‘against’ them. That’s how they feel, and for all the judge has to say to soften the blow, it makes no difference. They feel that they have not been believed. I don;t know what the answer is, but I do ask you to remember those two men in your prayers in a a special way today .
Note the “Archdiocese of Ottawa issued a statement Wednesday saying that in light of the conviction, Faucher’s suspension from the ministry and prohibition from representing himself as a priest will continue ‘indefinitely.'”
Why not just start the proceedings to have him defrocked? Never mind chatter about him being “indefinitely” prohibited> Do what must be done to have him defrocked/laicized. That would be a huge start to the “healing” of the victims and their families.