by Gary Dimmock
Ottawa Citizen
The Mountie on trial for torturing and starving his shackled, naked 11-year-old son in a darkened Kanata basement is free on bail and has unsupervised weekend visits with his two other sons, who are younger than the first-born son he is accused of almost starving to death in 2013.
The father, who has admitted that he burned his oldest son’s genitals because he thought the boy was the devil, can still play with his other sons on weekends. The unsupervised visits happen outside of Ottawa and the stepmother, who is also on trial, is not present for the visits.
The father has said he chained and handcuffed his son in the basement, and that he rationed the boy’s meals down to just two peanut-butter pitas a day. He also confessed that he burned his son with a lighter and once hit him so hard with the back of his hand that the boy was left with a broken tooth, court has heard.
The victim was sent to live with his father after his mother died in 2009. The boy’s maternal grandmother went to court in 2011 to try to win visitation rights, but a judge rejected her motion. The boy was distraught about his mother’s death and torn between his maternal and paternal family. The judge who dismissed the grandmother’s motion relied on the Mountie’s story and the child psychologist he enlisted.
The psychologist recommended the boy should remain in the full-time care of the father and his wife, both of whom are now on trial.
The same psychologist told the boy’s father in 2010 that he couldn’t “terrorize” his son, and warned him that if he kept punishing the boy, he’d have to call in the child-protection office.
The judge who heard the case was also aware of allegations that the Mountie was an abusive father.
Still, the judge ruled the boy’s maternal family could not have visitation rights. In the 2011 decision, the judge said the father was to send report cards and a school photograph of the boy to his maternal relatives. And if there was correspondence between the boy and his maternal family, the judge ruled that the controlling Mountie was allowed to read all letters sent to the boy he later tortured.
Two years after that ruling, on Feb. 12, 2013, the boy escaped his chains and fled his Kanata basement in search of water. He weighed only 50 pounds and doctors said he had almost starved to death.
One neighbour spotted the boy crouched at his garden tap with an empty water bottle in hand, so he filled it up for the boy in the kitchen, handing it back to him through the patio door.
“I thought I was looking at a ghost. His face was sunken. He looked very old,” the neighbour testified last year at the trial, which began last September.
The boy’s father and stepmother are accused of keeping the boy shackled in their basement for six months. Both are charged with aggravated assault, forcible confinement, and failure to provide necessities of life.
One of their neighbours testified that the boy showed up at their front door around suppertime on the day of his escape.
She told court that she hadn’t seen the boy in a year and a half.
He used to be “chubby, happy and full of energy,” she said. “He was completely changed. I couldn’t recognize him.”
The boy appeared nervous, she said, and fumbled for piggy-bank change from his pocket, offering it while asking if he could stay at her home.
She started walking the boy back to his own home, but when the boy complained of back pain, her husband called the police.
Crown attorney Michael Boyce also called another neighbour to testify about the boy. She said he was small for his age, and occasionally wasn’t wearing proper winter clothes while waiting for the morning school bus, usually alone and across the street from where the other kids stood while his father watched from a car parked down the road.
The woman testified that the boy wasn’t allowed to go to birthday parties in the neighbourhood. She said that when she offered the thirsty boy a juice box, he said he had to go ask his father for permission. The boy returned and said he wasn’t allowed, the neighbour recalled.
The boy’s father and stepmother are prohibited from talking to one another, according to their bail conditions. The suspended Mountie is also charged with careless storage of 9-mm Luger. Lawyers for both of the accused declined to comment Friday.
The Children’s Aid Society has a policy not to comment on such cases.
The trial, presided by Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger, continues Monday.
There is a publication ban on several witnesses — including the child psychologist — to protect the identity of the boy.