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	Pain of Abuse Resurfaces By Terri Saunders The Standard-Freeholder August 24, 2007 http://www.standard-freeholder.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp? contentid=666098&catname=Local%20News&classif= A witness told the Cornwall Public Inquiry Thursday he thought he'd put the abuse he'd suffered a young man behind him until he was forced to testify before the commission. "I thought I was okay until this came up again," said the man, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban. "I'm just trying to put all this behind me." The man was a complainant in a 2000 trial when a city school teacher was convicted of sexually abusing a number of young boys. The man has also claimed he was sexually abused by Ron Leroux, a man who has testified at that inquiry as a victim of alleged sexual abuse. Leroux has denied the allegations leveled against him by this man. The witness has also admitted stories he told in the past about having been abused by a city priest were fabricated in order to please Perry Dunlop, a former city cop who led a crusade against alleged child molesters in the 1990s in Cornwall. The man told the inquiry he did not want to participate in hearings, but did comply with a subpoena to appear issued by the commission. "I just wanted to go on with my life; I'd had enough," said the man. "And then the next thing you know, I get a subpoena." Also on Thursday, the man talked about how he was easily led by Dunlop into fabricating elements of his story, including allegations he'd been sexually molested by Rev. Charles MacDonald and that Marcel Lalonde, a former teacher at a city elementary school, had abused him while they were in Toronto on a school-sanctioned trip. The man told the inquiry the truth is he can't ever recall being abused by MacDonald and he has repeatedly admitted in the years since Lalonde's trial no abuse ever occurred during a school-sanctioned outing. The man said he was coerced by Dunlop and the former cop's brother-in-law, Carson Chisholm, to say Lalonde abused him on school trips because then he could sue the school board. The man said after he came clean about that fabrication, the relationship with Dunlop and his wife, Helen, rapidly deteriorated. The man told police in October 2000 about a telephone conversation he'd had with Helen Dunlop. "She said, 'What are you doing? I thought we were friends?'" the man told police. "I'm like, 'Yeah, you are, Helen.'" The man said Helen Dunlop then suggested in no uncertain terms the original story was the truth. "'What the hell are you lying for?'" the man told police Dunlop had said to him. "I said, 'No, I'm not lying, Helen.' "She says, 'Well, I hope you can sleep good at night.' And then she said goodbye. I'm surprised she even said, 'Bye.'" During cross-examination, an attorney for the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese suggested the man was easily persuaded by both Dunlop and Leroux. "Dunlop was an authority figure in your life, a person of weight and stature, and someone who was important in your life," said David Sherriff-Scott. "Yes," said the man. "Back you up to the wall, they said." "He made you feel like you were a champion of justice," said Sherriff-Scott, "just like him." "Yes," said the man. "He was protecting little kids." The inquiry will resume Monday. Contact: tsaunders@standard-freeholder.com
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