Apr 28, 2016

Mountie had priest perform exorcism on 'possessed' son

GARY DIMMOCKOttawa Sun
APRIL 27, 2016


Ontario Provincial Court House
Ontario Provincial Court House
The Mountie on trial for child torture enlisted his brother — a priest — to perform an exorcism on his “possessed” 11-year-old son.

“I thought the devil’s inside him. I saw his eyes and heard his voice,” the Mountie told court Wednesday morning.

The chilling detail was revealed under questioning by lawyer Anne London Weinstein, who is defending the Mountie’s wife, also on trial for confining the boy and failure to provide necessities of life.

It’s not clear when the exorcism was performed, but it was sometime before September 2012, and before the Mountie allegedly started torturing and starving his son in their darkened Kanata basement.

The Mountie, suspended without pay, has also admitted to burning his shackled, naked son with a BBQ lighter as a form of punishment for misbehaving and refusing to do homework.

'I burned him because I felt the devil lived in him,' ex-Mountie tells child-torture trial
It was the Mountie’s third day on the stand and when asked about the exorcism, he said his son reminded him of the girl in the 1973 horror film The Exorcist.

It’s not clear where they prayed to rid the boy’s “demons” but the boy, now 14, told investigators he thinks it was in his home because he recalls his father and the priest using a crucifix from the kitchen wall to perform the Rite of Exorcism.

The Mountie, who has presented himself as a victim, said he had run out of options to control his “out-of-control” son. He also rationed his food to the point that the boy weighed only 50 pounds on the day — Feb. 12, 2013 — he escaped his chains in search of water while his family was out shopping. Doctors, some of whom cried at the sight of his emaciated, tiny frame, said he almost starved to death.

The priest in question testified in December at the child-torture trial, and defended the disgraced Mountie.

However, the priest provided inconsistent testimonies under oath.

He told court back then that he had memory problems due to his “professional habit,” and that he had trained his brain to flush away facts after so many years of hearing confession.

The prosecutor, at the time, reminded court that the case had nothing to do with confession and firmly established the boy had never exhibited any out-of-control behaviour in the priest’s presence. The reality, the prosecutor said, was that the abused boy’s father exaggerated his son’s behaviour to justify the boy’s torture and that all of the boy’s so-called problems the priest knew about were detailed exclusively by the boy’s father.

The boy’s father and stepmother, both free on bail, are each charged with aggravated assault, forcible confinement, and failure to provide necessities of life.

The boy’s father is also charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm, and three counts of assault with a weapon (handcuffs, wooden stick, and a barbecue lighter). The stepmother, a 36-year-old federal government employee, is also charged with assault with a weapon (a wooden spoon).

There is a publication ban on the names of the accused to shield the identity of the boy.

The trial continues with the Mountie now under cross examination.

gdimmock@postmedia.com

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http://www.ottawasun.com/2016/04/27/mountie-had-priest-perform-exorcism-on-possessed-son

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