CANADA
Guelph Mercury
GUELPH — One of the sex assault victims of defrocked Guelph priest James Boudreau says his life spiraled downward from the abuse like a blow from a “wrecking ball” from which he still hasn’t recovered.
“It left me completely devastated and forever changed,” the victim, who cannot be identified, said in a victim impact statement offered Friday at a sentencing hearing for Bourdreau. To this day, he struggles with depression, isolation, loss of faith, despair and shame, court heard. He’s lost friends and fears his identity becoming public.
The victim, 17 at the time of the offence, during the 1980s, termed the assault “an act of betrayal,” from a priest he greatly admired. “I became the unwitting victim of a cunning aggressor” who wanted him for “his perverse sexual pleasure,” court was told.
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