by Gary Dimmock
Ottawa Citizen
A former RCMP counter-terrorism officer who tortured and starved his 11-year-old son in a darkened Kanata basement says he did it because he thought the boy was possessed.
The father took the stand in his own defence for a second day on Tuesday, testifying he was afraid his son would stab him in the heart as he slept. He said he also feared the “out-of-control” boy would rape his wife and beat his other children. “I was 100 per cent convinced of this,” he said.
“I was living with the devil at home,” the 44-year-old Mountie, who is now suspended without pay, told the court.
The father intensified disturbing punishments and videotaped interrogations after the boy refused to do his homework, court heard. The police officer had pulled his son out of school in 2012 and homeschooled him.
He presented himself in court again Tuesday as a victim of a “vindictive” son, who had “always rejected me.” He said the child never pitied him for his own troubled childhood in war-torn Lebanon, where the father was raped as a boy. He said his son was a stranger to him, and worse, reminded him of a sexually deviant childhood friend.
“I had an enemy in front of me,” he said. “Me and my son were at war.”
“I didn’t care for anybody’s feelings except my own … the pain he was putting me in … I was in pain and fear the whole time,” said the father, who is mounting a PTSD defence that he didn’t know his actions were wrong or have the mental capacity to form the intent needed for a crime.
The courtroom fell silent Tuesday as he admitted to chaining his son to a post in the basement, torturing the shackled and naked child and to rationing his food.
“I hit him. Before the hitting, I burned him (with a barbecue lighter) because I felt the devil lived in him. I needed to defend myself. I was facing something scary,” he said.
The father also admitted that he made his son sleep on the basement floor but denied a series of allegations, ranging from forcing the child to use a slop bucket in the basement as a toilet and forcing him to drink his own urine, and that he tied him up on a Florida trip while the rest of the family hit the beach.
The father’s testimony corroborates the boy’s earlier testimony that he was shackled in chains, handcuffed in the basement and forced to sleep on the floor until he escaped on Feb. 12, 2013, in search of water. The boy weighed only 50 pounds at that point and doctors said he almost starved to death, court has heard.
Under examination-in-chief by defence lawyer Robert Carew, the accused addressed his videotaped interrogations of his son, shown in court. He said it was as though he was looking at someone else. In one video, the naked, shackled boy, his face pale and sunken, is seen begging to be reunited with his family upstairs. “I want my family back!” the boy pleads.
The father’s testimony also matched his son’s words that the man had been trying to “rid my demons.”
“I couldn’t believe it … I hated my life,” he said.
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).
The father also testified that his wife, the boy’s stepmom, never witnessed any of the abuse.
The father in this case won full custody of the boy after his biological mom died in 2009. A child psychologist has testified that although the boy’s parents reported their son was a delinquent, he found nothing of the sort, and reported that he was an extremely intelligent kid, despite his father’s “terrorizing.”