CTV
October 16, 2009
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20091016/lahey_search_091016/20091016?hub=Canada
HALIFAX — Police allege they found hundreds of files and dozens of videos on Bishop Raymond Lahey's laptop, with many showing young males engaged in various sex acts, in search warrants used by the RCMP to obtain more electronic devices from his residences and office in Nova Scotia.
The warrants, executed by Nova Scotia RCMP last week and released Friday, cite information compiled by Ottawa police after they seized Lahey's laptop at the city's airport on Sept. 15 as he returned from the United Kingdom.
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| Reverend Raymond Lahey makes his way into the courthouse in Ottawa on Friday, Oct. 9, 2009. Photo by Adrian Wyld |
The documents say Ottawa police viewed an unspecified number of the 964 files in a folder called "downloads," and 33 videos Lahey had on his portable computer, many of them featuring young males masturbating and performing other sex acts.
"Most of the images and videos of concern viewed involved males who appeared to be teenage boys, who could possibly be 18 years old, even though some ... (have) very young facial features and were very young looking," says the warrant to search Lahey's apartment in Sydney, N.S.
But the warrants also say some images show boys as young as eight, and others aged 10 to 12 exposing themselves.
Lahey was charged with possessing and importing child pornography on Sept. 25 after he was detained and questioned by Canada Border Services Agency officials at the airport more than a week earlier.
None of the allegations made in the search warrants have been proven in court. Lahey is scheduled to make a court appearance on the charges he face on Nov. 4.
Border officials flagged Lahey because he was a man travelling alone and his passport showed several trips to Southeast Asia, Germany, Spain and other areas known for child pornography, the court documents say.
An Ottawa police spokesman couldn't say how many of the 964 files were images because the search warrants were executed by the RCMP as part of their investigation.
But Const. J.P. Vincelette said, "in general terms, when computer files are searched, all files are searched."
Lahey, who stepped down as bishop of the Antigonish diocese a day after the charges were filed, also told Ottawa police on Sept. 15 that he "had no time for child exploitation, no time for child pornography," according to one warrant.
In the warrant, he is alleged to have told one officer that he was attracted to young men, aged 20 or 21, and that he had never done anything abusive to a child and would "never have any sexual interest in a person under 18."
Ottawa police claim to have found several images of boys as young as eight years old engaged in various sexual acts on some of Lahey's devices, which included the laptop, a personal digital assistant and other electronic storage devices.
It is alleged in the warrants that one seized image shows a boy of about eight or 10, naked and on a bench. The documents assert that others show boys aged 10 to 12 exposing themselves, with one wearing black and white rosary beads and frowning as he sits on an office chair.
The two search warrants were used to seize more devices from Lahey's apartment in Sydney and his office and home in Antigonish, where he served as bishop for the past six years.
The warrant for his home in Antigonish states that officers seized two cellphones, cassette tapes, cameras, CDs and DVDs, and two computers, while they recovered one computer from his Sydney apartment.
One of the search warrants says the diocese had purchased four computers for the 69-year-old bishop since August 2003. But Lahey told Ottawa police the seized laptop was his, not the church's.
One of warrants alleges that Lahey told an Ottawa police detective on Oct. 1 that he did not have a computer in his residence in Antigonish.
The warrant says Lahey told police when he was in Antigonish he would "either use his laptop computer or the computer at the bishop's office, which was also used by the office staff."
It says the housekeeper for the diocese recalls seeing two desktop computers in the bishop's residence in Antigonish and that they were there on Sept. 22, the most recent occasion that she was in the house.
The documents allege that Lahey used MSN to chat with people he meets online and that the conversations were often sexual in nature, but he thought the people involved were adults.
One document also says the RCMP officer seeking the search warrant interviewed Shane Earle, a Newfoundland man who alleges he saw a catalogue of child pornographic images in Lahey's bedroom when he was a priest in St. John's in the mid-1980s.
In the search warrant, it is alleged Earle told the officer last week that "the images were of boys not older than 13 years old and that in some of the images the boys were sexually aroused."
Earle has said in an interview that he told police in Newfoundland about the incident a few years after it is alleged to have occurred. His claims prompted police there to review their files, but they say they have not found any record of it.
The devices seized in Nova Scotia will be examined by a special forensic unit based in Halifax.
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