February 12, 2006

Sex-abuse inquiry can't heal wounds

CANADA
Ottawa Sun

By JORGE BARRERA, OTTAWA SUN

ALAIN Seguin says he was groped while sitting in a pew watching the 1974 installation of Gatineau-Hull Bishop Adolphe Proulx.

The touches were merely brushes, a hand pausing momentarily. It was later, in a Lord Elgin Hotel room, where Seguin said he was molested by a Cornwall high school photography teacher who claimed to be good friends with Proulx, a former Cornwall-Alexandria bishop.

Proulx is dead. The teacher lives in Montreal. The Cathedrale St-Redempteur de Hull, where the ceremony was held, is now a retirement home. And Seguin still lives with a gash in his soul in Cornwall.

Seguin, 45, doesn't believe a public inquiry, beginning tomorrow, into an alleged Cornwall pedophile ring will be a balm to any of his wounds. But he hopes the public will understand what he, and many others, lived through in the small city.

Posted by kshaw at February 12, 2006 08:37 AM