by Gary Dimmock
Ottawa Citizen
The Mountie on trial for torturing and starving his 11-year-old son enlisted his brother — a priest — to perform an exorcism on the “possessed” boy.
“I thought the devil’s inside him. I saw his eyes and heard his voice,” the Mountie told court Wednesday.
His chilling testimony came during questioning by lawyer Anne London Weinstein, who is defending the Mountie’s wife, also on trial for confining the boy and failing to give him life’s basic needs. His wife, who still wears her wedding ring, is not testifying.
It’s not clear when or where the exorcism was performed, but it was sometime before September 2012, and before the Mountie started chaining up his son in their Kanata basement.
The Mountie, suspended without pay, has also admitted to burning his shackled, naked son with a barbecue lighter as a punishment for so-called impure thoughts.
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 child, 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 during his testimony, said he had run out of options with 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.
Under cross-examination by Crown Attorney Michael Boyce, the Mountie appeared rattled when asked about burning his son’s genitals as a “horrific” punishment.
“I was in a deep fog. I didn’t appreciate what I was doing to my son,” the 44-year-old father said.
The accused is mounting a PTSD defence with the hope he can show he didn’t have the mental capacity needed to form intent.
“I didn’t know it was morally wrong,” he testified.
The Mountie said a doctor told him he had PTSD after his February 2013 arrest, and said he had never heard of the condition before his diagnosis.
His condition, he said, grew from his own troubled childhood in war-torn Lebanon. He has spoken of dead bodies, bombs and being raped as a boy.
The prosecutor firmly established that the accused was able to ace his RCMP exams and didn’t report any flashbacks until after his arrest for terrorizing his son.
The priest enlisted for the boy’s exorcism testified last year and defended his brother, the Mountie.
But he told court 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.
Marie Dufort, the prosecutor who questioned him at the time, 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 torture and that all of the boy’s so-called problems the priest knew about were detailed exclusively by the boy’s father.
The father and stepmother, both free on bail, are each charged with aggravated assault, forcible confinement, and failure to provide necessities of life.
His father is also charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm, and three counts of assault with a weapon. The stepmother, a 36-year-old federal government employee, is also charged with assault with a weapon.
The Mountie testified Wednesday that his wife, the boy’s stepmom, didn’t witness any of the abuse. In a February 2013 interview with police, the stepmom said she felt guilty for not protecting the boy.
There is a publication ban on the names of the accused and the priest to shield the identity of the boy.