Second man testifies at Montreal priest’s sexual assault trial

Brian Boucher, 57, has been stripped of his parish responsibilities while he faces multiple counts of sexual assault brought by three victims.

Montreal Gazette

20 November 2018

Michelle Lalonde, Montreal Gazette

A second man testified Tuesday that Brian Boucher, a Catholic priest active until 2015 in several parishes in the Montreal region, sexually assaulted him on a regular basis, in this case for more than three years beginning when the victim was just 10 years old.

Boucher, 57, has been stripped of his parish responsibilities while he faces multiple counts of sexual assault brought by three victims. The charges relate to incidents alleged to have occurred between 1985 and 2015 when Boucher was active in churches in Montreal, LaSalle, Dorval, Town of Mount Royal and Senneville.

On Monday, a man in his 20s testified that Boucher began sexually abusing him when he was 12 years old. He said he had gone to Boucher, then parish priest at Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in Town of Mount Royal, to confess about dancing with a girl at a party and having lustful thoughts.

Brian Boucher SPVM
He said the priest punished him by ordering him to undress and submit to sexual touching. The man alleges the abuse continued for three years, was frequent and escalated to anal penetration.

Two other victims are scheduled to testify early next year about their own sexual assault complaints against Boucher. But Crown prosecutor Annabelle Sheppard called one of those victims to court on Tuesday in an effort to demonstrate a pattern in Boucher’s behaviour and to counter a defense claim that the victim who testified Monday fabricated the evidence out of anger at Boucher.

On Tuesday, in what is known as a voir dire hearing of similar-fact evidence, a man now in his 30s told the court that in 2008 when he was 10 years old, Boucher took him under his wing and befriended his family, who were parishioners at St-John Brébeuf Church in LaSalle. He became an altar boy and the priest often drove him home from church or school.

This report will be updated.