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  Priest's Sex Abuse Destroyed Union, Ex-Wife Testifies

Ottawa Sun [Canada]
October 11, 2006

http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/OttawaAndRegion/2006/10/11/1999650-sun.html

Cornwall -- The former wife of a man sexually abused by a priest told the Cornwall Public Inquiry that the aftermath of the ordeal destroyed her marriage.

Denise Deslauriers said Benoit Brisson left her in 1986 because he was unable to deal with the abuse he suffered at the hands of Gilles Deslauriers (no relation).

"The life I thought I was going to live didn't happen," she told the inquiry yesterday. "We are no longer (together). That is a consequence of what happened."

Gilles Deslauriers pleaded guilty in the fall of 1986 to abusing Brisson and three other Cornwall boys.

After Brisson revealed that he was abused, Denise approached Deslauriers, as well as then-Bishop Eugene LaRocque, to talk about what happened to Brisson.

She told the inquiry, which is looking into the institutional and police responses to reports of child sex abuse in the Cornwall area, she was shocked by the response.

"(There was) a complete lack of comprehension of the seriousness of what was going on," she said, "and of the impact, the consequences."

In the spring of 1986, the diocese established an ad hoc committee to look into the allegations against Deslauriers, and Denise was given the opportunity to tell her husband's story.

Meanwhile, Deslauriers had been transferred to a Hull church.

Denise said "knowing that somebody with that predisposition, somebody who might be a pedophile (could continue) in a position where he would have access (to young people) and contact (with them) through his official functions as a priest ... that was completely illogical and unacceptable."

 
 

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