CAS not notified of alleged abuse; City police officers didn't think it was necessary
Author: Trevor Pritchard
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Two of the principal investigators who looked into sex abuse allegations made against a priest and a probation officer in 1993 "never thought" of notifying the local Children's Aid Society, the Cornwall Public Inquiry heard yesterday.

Staff Sgt. Luc Brunet was the head of the force's criminal investigations branch from 1993 to 1999, and oversaw Const. Heidi Sebalj's nine-month investigation into allegations raised by David Silmser against Rev. Charles MacDonald and Ken Seguin.

"It was my belief, at the time, that being the case was historical and there were no grounds to believe any recent incident had occurred, that the Children's Aid Society would not have any interest in this case," Brunet wrote in a 1995 memo to former chief Anthony Repa that was entered into evidence on Monday.

"Therefore, Const. Sebalj or I never thought of advising that agency."

In 1993, Silmser was offered - and accepted - a $32,000 payout from the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese.

The money was in exchange for Silmser not pressing charges against MacDonald, who allegedly abused him while he was an altar boy at St. Columban's Church in the 1960s and 1970s.

His file was turned over to the local CAS branch by former cop Perry Dunlop and eventually leaked to the media.

Those events helped spark the call for an inquiry into how institutions like the Cornwall Police Service and the CAS handled historical allegations of sexual abuse.

Brunet told commission counsel Pierre Dumais that,, while he and Sebalj didn't think to tell the CAS about Silmser's allegations, then-director Richard Abell should have come to police directly for more information rather than accepting Dunlop's file.

Abell knew "full well" that he was "compromising" Dunlop's position by taking the Silmser file, Brunet said.

"We (the police and the CAS) have always bent over backwards to work together as a team," said Brunet. "If they wanted to do an investigation, we would have co-operated."

While city police never laid charges against MacDonald or Seguin, the OPP charged MacDonald with more than a dozen sex-related offences in 1996 as part of their Project Truth probe.

A judge stayed the charges against MacDonald in 2002 after determining they'd taken too long to come to trial.

MacDonald has always steadfastly maintained his innocence.

Seguin committed suicide in November 1993.

spoke with Archbishop

Shortly after Silmser told police he didn't want to press charges, Brunet and then-chief Claude Shaver drove to Ottawa to speak with Archbishop Carlo Curis about permanently stripping MacDonald of his clerical duties.

The civil settlement, Brunet testified, wasn't in the community's best interest because it meant the now-retired MacDonald would still be working around children.

In a 1994 OPP interview entered into evidence, Brunet explained why he and Shaver went to Curis before approaching Eugene Larocque, who at the time was the local bishop.

"I felt that as a Catholic and a police officer, the problem had not been dealt with and there was a lot of potential for this priest to offend again," Brunet said in the interview.

Brunet told Dumais the force had clashed with Larocque during an earlier investigation involving a local priest accused of sex crimes.

"Your thoughts were the Archbishop could do something about this?" asked Dumais.

"Yes," said Brunet.

Curis was "very cordial," Brunet said, but told the officers the matter had to be dealt with at the diocesan level.

He and Shaver set up a meeting with Larocque later that day, said Brunet.

During that meeting, they confronted Larocque with evidence given by two other men that corroborated parts of Silmser's story.

The two men - known only as C-3 and C-56 - were not willing to bring their own cases against MacDonald, however.

Both Dumais and Comm. Normand Glaude wanted to know why - if Cornwall police were so concerned about community safety - that they didn't also go to the local parole office with Silmser's sexual abuse allegations against Seguin.

Silmser had told police at the start of their investigation he couldn't handle dealing with both cases at the same time, and wanted to focus on MacDonald.

Brunet said police weren't investigating Seguin and there were no witnesses to corroborate the allegations against him.

"I didn't feel that, under the law, we had any right to (go to Seguin's employers)," Brunet said.

Since the diocese had already settled out-of-court with Silmser, police weren't telling church officials anything - aside from the corroborating evidence - they didn't already know, he added. Brunet is scheduled to continue testifying when the inquiry resumes at 9:30 a.m.

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