CANADA
The Vanguard
By Eric Bourque
THE VANGUARD
www.thevanguard.ca
Five years after going public with his story of being sexually abused by a priest when he was a boy, Del Boudreau has put his story in a book, one he hopes will encourage others with a similar story to talk about it.
In the book, Deliver Us From Evil, Boudreau talks about growing up in Wedgeport and about the prominent role of the church in the community at that time.
Among other things, he recalls being chosen to be an altar boy – considered an honour at the time – and recounts how the abuse began.
He was about 10 years old when it started, he said, but it wasn’t until more than a half-century later, when he was 65, that he shared details of the abuse with his family before going public.
In early 2009 Boudreau saw a story in the Vanguard about two Wedgeport natives – including his younger brother – who said they had been abused when they were boys by Adolphe LeBlanc, the parish priest in Wedgeport for about a decade in the 1950s and 60s. After reading the article Boudreau contacted this newspaper and told his own story, saying he had been abused by the same priest. (Adolphe LeBlanc died in 1971.)
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