CANADA
CBC News
By Caroline Barghout, CBC News Posted: Jan 12, 2017
It is a secret he’s kept for 28 years. Now Joe is ready to talk about the sexual abuse he said he endured at the hand of a Winnipeg priest.
It was October 1988 when Joe first met Father Omer Desjardins. He was working as the night caregiver at Credo Home, a Winnipeg group home run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Roman Catholic religious community of priests and brothers commonly referred to as the Oblates.
Joe had just turned 15 and didn’t want to live with his mother and her boyfriend. He became a ward of Child and Family Services and was placed in the group home.
“We didn’t really talk to him much cause he didn’t show up for work until 9 or 9:30 p.m., somewhere around there and bedtime for us was 10:30 p.m. on school nights,” said Joe, 43, who does not want his last name used.
But within a few weeks Joe said Desjardins started coming into his room to talk.
“It was pretty normal stuff,” Joe said. “Within a couple weeks, he was coming into the bedroom every night. It started off he’d be rubbing your back. Eventually his hands would slowly start to move.”
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