Crown Seeks 11 Years in Beauval Sex Abuse
By Hannah Spray
Paul Leroux remains unrepentant for molesting eight boys he was supposed to be caring for and protecting, and that makes it very hard to forgive him, says one of his victims. "He has lived in denial. Forgiveness for me is something that has to be reciprocal. And if he's not willing to do that, I cannot give him that, because he still denies what he's done, so I cannot in any way give him that," the 59-year-old man said outside Battleford Court of Queen's Bench on Thursday. His name cannot be published due a publication ban on the victims' identities. Leroux, 73, was convicted last month of the string of crimes at the Beauval Indian Residential School in the 1960s, but on Thursday during sentencing arguments he still maintained his innocence, saying he intended to appeal. Nevertheless, he said the sentence for fondling and raping the teenage boys should be three years, noting he already received a 10-year sentence in 1998 for similar crimes in Inuvik in the late 1960s and 1970s. Crown prosecutor Mitch Piche outlined what he believed each of the Beauval sexual assaults deserved; when he added them up, it came to 25.5 years. However, he acknowledged that was a "crushing" sentence and wouldn't be considered fit, adjusting it down to 11 years. The effects of Le roux's actions are still felt in numerous communities, Piche argued. "It's almost akin to Mr. Leroux having dropped an atomic bomb on ... northern Saskatchewan," Piche said. "This mushroom cloud continued to grow and dissipated and, I suggest to you, it left in its wake the equivalent of radiation poisoning in this part of the world." Leroux was in his early 20s when he used his position of trust as a dormitory supervisor to abuse the boys at the residential school. He was considered the "golden-haired boy" by the priests and nuns and was very popular with the boys, leading the boys' choir and coaching the hockey team. With Leroux's help, many of the boys could have gone on to do great things; instead, he used their bodies as sexual objects and "turned them into empty shells," Piche said. Several victims submitted victim impact statements outlining how they carried the shame and guilt of the abuse with them and associated it with the broken homes, criminality, heartbreak and psychological damage that accompanied them. "We internalized the shame and when it surfaced like a malignant dysfunction, some of us drank and tried to drown the pain of memory to oblivion. Still others, like me, sought solace in isolation," the 59-year-old victim read aloud in court. "What you took away from me were the most fundamental values of the human spirit, to love unconditionally and to trust implicitly those people who showed me their compassion and believed still in my value as a human being." Leroux noted society was very different in the 1960s than it is now, in how it views sexual abuse. If it was talked about, it was in terms of moral sin or scandal, not in terms of the psychological damage it causes, he said. "I'm not using that as an excuse, but just saying that generally ... these matters were never discussed," he said. Leroux argued the victims should have come forward sooner - at least when police began inquiring about victims following his 1998 conviction in Inuvik - and they could have all been dealt with at the same time instead of eating up more years of his life. Justice Murray Acton will give his sentencing decision on Dec. 12. Contact: hspray@thestarphoenix.com
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.