No More Secrets, by Tina Comeau, The Vanguard, February 2, 2010

No More Secrets

By Tina Comeau
The Vanguard
February 2, 2010

http://www.novanewsnow.com/article-427424-No-more-secrets.html

CANADA -- When sisters Jeanne Doucette and Margaret Ann Deveau flip through the pages of an old family photo album, they're struck by how many times he appears in the photos.

And if he's not in the pictures, then he was the one taking them.

He was a family friend. He was considered part of the family. He was always in the house. And because he was always in the house, that's where it happened.

At home.

Growing up as young girls, Jeanne and Margaret Ann's home is where they should have been safe and felt safe. Instead, they say, it's where he sexually abused and molested them again and again.

Sisters Jeanne Doucette and Margaret Ann Deveau of Wedgeport, Yarmouth County, have filed lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Yarmouth and the Archdiocese of Halifax for sexual abuse they say they suffered at the hands of Father Eddie Theriault.
Photo by Tina Comeau

He being Father Edouard (Eddie) Theriault, the local parish priest.

Last week on their behalf, the Ontario law firm of Ledriot Beckett filed lawsuits with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Yarmouth and the Archdiocese of Halifax. The firm says it has been in contact with five people saying they are victims of abuse by Father Theriault, but so far these are the only two civil suits that have been filed.

The lawsuits allege that the dioceses failed in their duty to protect the women when they were young girls and were being abused by the priest.

The two sisters as they would have looked back when they say the abuse was occurring.

The lawsuits are the latest in a string of civil suits that have been filed against the dioceses over the past year. And they bring to three the number of priests who have been accused of abusing young girls and boys decades ago.

Because the abuse alleged in these latest lawsuits happened more than 40 years ago, the question is asked: Why now?

"Because sometimes it takes us a long while to get to now," says Jeanne Doucette.

A dated photo of Father Eddie Theriault.

Why now?

Because the sisters worry about other abuse survivors who are suffering in silence. And they worry for those who may still be preyed upon.

Why now?

Because the church has to be held accountability for what happened, they say, and also for what didn't happen.

In thoughts she has written down on paper, Margaret Ann Deveau writes: "For me, this lawsuit against the diocese, and in turn the Catholic church and its teachings, is about holding the people involved accountable for their actions, their inactions and decisions that affected the lives of so many people who had the utmost trust in the priest and the hierarchy of the Church.

As a small child, Jeanne Doucette (nee Deveau) says Father Eddie Theriault always promised her this dog if she kept their secret. She didn’t get the dog, but she didn’t keep the secret either.

"As more and more of us victims come forward and dare to expose ourselves and our families, maybe the Church and the people who are part of it may finally realize that the priests, bishops, archbishops and the Pope are merely human beings that also came into the world as babies, and as not as God as they were portray to us as children. They are not above the law of the land."

Instead, Deveau says for her the Church created a hell on earth.

Margaret Ann Deveau was around eight years old when she says the abuse began. And it lasted until she turned 15. It happened in her own house, because that's where the priest had access to her. Because of his position – and because he was trusted – no one thought differently about the priest being alone with a young girl.

After the years of abuse ended, and when she finally summoned the courage to tell someone what had happened, she was told, "You must have been looking for it."

But what eight-year-old girl goes out looking to be sexually abused?

But as bad as the abuse was, she says the worst was when she found out someone else was experiencing the same thing. That someone else was Margaret's younger sister Jeanne.

For her, she says, the abuse started when she was around three. A lot of the time it revolved around her afternoon nap taps. A reason, she believes, why to this day she can never close her eyes and have a good night's sleep.

Jeanne Doucette never had any intention of telling her sister that she had been abused. And in the end, she didn't tell.

She didn't have to.

"She said something and once you've been there, the words don't have to be said. Your sixth sense is acute," says Deveau. "She just talked about nothing at all about him. All of a sudden I said, 'Oh my God no, he didn't go after you too,' and she got mad, because we weren't talking about that."

But Deveau got angry too, and the rage was more than she could handle. She felt a sense of responsibility for what had happened to her younger sister. She was supposed to have protected her. But she had failed.

Deveau took that rage and confronted Father Theriault. He denied any of the abuse ever occurred between himself and Margaret Ann. She couldn't believe he would deny it. So she confronted him another time. She badgered him. Until finally, she says, he confessed that he had abused her. But he didn't admit to abusing any others.

Next she went to the police, and following an investigation they charged the priest with indecent assault against both sisters when they were under-aged. In 1993 Father Theriault pleaded guilty to indecent assault against Margaret Ann, who was then by going the last name of Boudreau. And at his sentencing he said he was sorry. Her sister Jeanne, though, couldn't go through with the charges. So when a plea bargain was offered for the guilty plea on one charge, and the dropping of the other, she agreed.

It's a decision she would almost immediately regret.

The priest did not receive jail time, rather he got a two-year suspended sentence and 500 hours of community service. In the courtroom Margaret Ann stood up and asked the judge to remove the publication ban from her name so that she could tell her story.

"I said you've got to allow the kids, now grownups, to say what happened," she said.

The time for secrets was over.

She's asked the same question now that she was asked back then. Were you upset that he didn't go to jail? Incredibly, she says, jail is not the outcome she wanted.

"Because in jail he would have been hiding," she says. "I wanted him in the community doing the work, having to face all of those people."

Father Theriault was ordained by the Archdiocese of Halifax in June 1951. He was incardinated to the Diocese of Yarmouth in 1956 and had a long career as a Roman Catholic priest, during which time he was also appointed vice-chancellor and chancellor for the Yarmouth Diocese. He died on April 15, 2008 at the age of 82.

In the 1960s the sisters were growing up in the community of St. Alphonse, Digby County. They were raised in a close and loving Roman Catholic family and were parishioners of Saint Alphonse Parish and attended Saint Alphonse Catholic School.

In the statements of claim filed with the Supreme Court, it refers to how, because of Theriault's position, parents trusted him with the training, safety and care of their children. It's why he was allowed to be alone with the girls.

In hindsight the women say they doubt their parents suspected anything, otherwise they wouldn't have allowed him to be with them unsupervised. Still, says Deveau, when she came forward to accuse the priest of the abuse in the early 1990s, she didn't have a lot of support. She says she lost family members.

It's like others have said. Things were different in the 1960s. It was considered an honour to be in the company of the parish priest. And you certainly never spoke ill of a priest, or accused him of something awful. Even if you did, who would believe you anyway?

But the statement of claims filed with the Supreme Court allege that the diocese and archdiocese knew that the priest had the propensity to engage in deviant behaviours, and that they knew he was doing so based on a number of factors that included knowledge or complaints of Father Theriault's activities with young people at his previous postings, the frequency with which the plantiffs and other children were involved with the priest, the unusual interest he took in children and the frequency and duration that the priest would have children in his company.

He even, the sisters claim, was having relations with adult women.

"Despite their knowledge set out above, the Archdiocese and Diocese took no steps to stop the behavior or to protect the plantiff(s)," the statements of claim read.

"In the alternative, if the Archdiocese and Diocese did not have direct knowledge of the aforementioned behaviors, the plantiff(s) plead that (they) ought to have known," reads the statements of claim.

The diocese and archdiocese will be given time to file a statement of defence. The church is not commenting publicly about these lawsuits.

Both sisters say because of the abuse, they have lived a life that has included physical pain and discomfort, mental anguish, humiliation, shame, guilt, low-self esteem and emotional trauma, among other things. It has impacted their education, their ability to work and it has impacted their relationships with others.

Basically, the abuse resulted in a loss of enjoyment of life.

And it tore apart their ability to trust.

Jeanne Doucette says she finds it difficult to trust others around her children. So she shielded them perhaps more than they would have liked. They didn't go to as many sleepovers as their other friends. She was always worried, would someone go after them. She couldn't even trust that the decisions she was making in her own life were the right ones.

For her sister Margaret, a lot of the feelings she had turned to anger. And throughout her life it didn't win her many friends. She's apologized to her children many times over for the anger she displayed. But she was angry about the abuse. And she was angry for the way it had made her feel when she was a child.

"You do think that it must be you because he's the adult. He's the one that's next to God. So even though your gut is saying this doesn't feel right, nobody else is saying anything and he continues so you think you must be the one that's wrong. That's what it feels like. Because everybody else thinks the man is wonderful."

So over the years she felt a fierce need to protect others and to protect herself.

"I wasn't liked a lot of times. But that was the only way I knew how to survive. I had to crush them before they crushed me," she says, her voice breaking as her eyes moisten and a single tear starts to roll down her cheek. "Even last week I kept thinking, my God, am I really doing the right thing again, because there are always those that say, 'It happened 50 years ago, for Christ sake, shut up.' They don't realize how much it changes who you are."

So she told her sister, this time it's got to be for you and me. And, they say, it has to be for others out there who have suffered as they have.

The lawsuits filed are seeking $1.7 million in damages. But the women say this isn't about the money.

It's about change and accountability. If action had been taken when the warning flags were raised – instead of just turning a blind eye, or moving priests from parish to parish – it could have spared many a life of anguish and pain.

Aaron Lealess of the law firm Ledroit Beckett says under the civil damage system that exists, money is really all the courts allow for. But he says the lawsuits do force the hand of the dioceses to be accountable.

"With our mediation we can use the threat of a public lawsuit to pressure the diocese into making other kinds of reforms. Like in the Diocese of London (Ontario) we've pressured them into changing rules and creating new policies that make it safer for children," he says.

Lealess says the lawsuits create a mechanism to investigate what took place. It's information that wouldn't likely be voluntarily handed over.

"The reason isn't admitted to but the evidence usually points to the church protecting its reputation and its public image, ultimately at the risk of innocent young children," he says. "In some cases its been proven where they've moved a priest from parish to parish. The conclusion is usually that their ultimate goal is to the protect the reputation of the church at all cost."

And it is difficult to put a price tag on that.

"None of us do this for the money. We wouldn't go through what we have to," says Jeanne Doucette. "They can't pay us enough to erase what happened. But if we can help someone else come forward and start their healing process, than it's worth it."

Her sister agrees. Margaret Ann Deveau doubts she'll ever reach a point in her life where all of this is behind her, even though the healing process has been, and continues, to unfold.

"For those of us who fall under the umbrella of any kind of abuse as children, it is the child inside ourselves that stays in prison," she says.

"Now in our adult bodies, it is the child inside that needs to be freed.

"Someone once said, 'Take what you learn and make a difference with it.' That is what I now choose to do. If it helps someone, that's wonderful. If it only helps me, it's still wonderful. At least I have made a difference."