CANADA
The StarPhoenix
[Sexual assault by priest haunts victim – The StarPhoenix]
From the victim impact statement of a 46-year-old woman who was 10 years old when Omer Desjardins sexually touched her in 1978:
“You sexually assaulted me many years ago, when I was only a child. This betrayal has affected me from that night on to the present day.
I did tell my grandmother the very next morning that you had done this to me, but she did not share this with my mother, her own daughter.
You were a priest, supposedly a man of God. How could you do this to an innocent child?
For many years, I tried not to think of what you had done to me and how it has affected me from that day forward. I became a mother (in 2003) and was blessed with a beautiful daughter. … I once again started to think about the sexual assault after the birth of my daughter. She is my world and I want to protect her from all the evil in this world, especially sexual predators like you.
I finally decided last year that it was time to report this crime to the police. Even though it had been 30-plus years, the world and your family needed to know what you did to me as a child.
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