York Region's Former Top Doctor Denies Allegations He Sexually Abused Four Boys

Mississauga
February 20, 2013

http://www.mississauga.com/news/article/1583063--york-region-s-former-top-doctor-denies-allegations-he-sexually-abused-four-boys

NEWMARKET — The 91-year-old former top physician in York Region defiantly denied allegations Tuesday that he sexually abused little boys decades ago, while he was a family doctor, United Church elder and Boy Scout volunteer.

“Not guilty,” Dr. Owen Slingerland said four times as allegations of indecent assault on four boys were read out in a Newmarket courtroom.

Supporting himself with a cane, Slingerland spoke in a loud but cracking voice as he denied the charges before Justice Anne Mullin in Superior Court.

Using a hearing enhancer over his hearing aid, Slingerlander then listened to the son of his former best friend accuse him of eight years of repeated sexual abuse.

Slingerland, who rose to become York Region’s medical officer of health, retired in 1988. He has been free on bail since his arrest in 2010.

William Willetts, 56, now a journalist in Australia, testified that Slingerland sexually abused him from the time he was 5 years old until he was 13, when they lived in the then-tiny village of Mount Albert, east of Newmarket.

His brother, Robert Willetts, has made similar allegations against Slingerland, who was the region’s medical officer of health for almost two decades.

Assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Gleitman told court the alleged abuse of the four boys spanned from 1959 to 1970.

The Willetts brothers decided they wanted their names to be made public, while the identities of the other two alleged victims are protected by a publication ban, Gleitman said.

“It’s not my shame,” William Willetts testified. “It’s not my blame.”

He said he has undergone intensive therapy to deal with the emotional repercussions of sexual abuse, and he is now married and a father of boys of his own.

“I have managed that man’s presence in my life my whole life,” William Willetts testified.

He said the abuse took place in Slingerland’s office, in his own family home, and in the basement of a United Church building where Cub and Boy Scout meetings were held.

Under sometimes intense cross-examination from Slingerland’s lawyer, Faisal Joseph, William Willetts said he is not prone to exaggeration.

Willetts said it took him decades before he told his family of the abuse, and they passed on his case to a York Region police officer they knew.

He said the doctor had a position of authority in Mount Albert, back when it was a village of just “500 people on the side of a hill.”

“He walked around like he owned the place,” Willetts testified. “He commanded respect and he got respect.”

The trial before the judge alone continues.