CANADA
Kingston Whig-Standard
By Sue Yanagisawa, Kingston Whig-Standard
Thursday, August 4, 2016
The sexual molestation trial of a retired 68-year-old Roman Catholic priest, who served in this area in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, concluded Thursday with his lawyer acknowledging that his client’s accuser “has had a very difficult life.”
“We’re all sympathetic,” defence lawyer Clyde Smith told Superior Court Justice Wolfram Tausendfreund, “but we don’t get to make the decision in this case on sympathy. We don’t get to make it on speculation either.”
Smith’s client, Robyn Q. Gwyn, was put on trial on five charges arising from a time period between the fall of 1984 and the summer of 1993. They include two counts of sexually assaulting the complainant when he was an adolescent and young teen; touching him when he was under 14 for a sexual purpose; sexually exploiting a position of trust; and invitation to sexual touching. Gwyn pleaded not guilty to all of them.
But assistant Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis told the judge Thursday that he’s seeking convictions only on the first two counts of the indictment — the sexual assault charges. And “the issue,” he told the judge, “is really sexual touching without consent and without the capacity to give consent,” because of the complainant’s age at the time.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.