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Nova Scotia government officials are protecting alleged child abusers by failing to aggressively pursue cases such as that of a former provincial youth centre employee.
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General Interest Periodicals – Canada HALIFAX- Nova Scotia government officials are protecting alleged child abusers by failing to aggressively pursue cases such as that of a former provincial youth centre employee who recently admitted molesting boys that the lawyer for several abuse victims says. William M Leahey said that two interviews conducted with former counselors at the school by provincial investigators –one of the former counselors was convicted of 11 counts of abusing boys at Shelburne but now denies any sexual encounters – indicate that leads are not being followed up in the probe of sexual and physical abuse at provincial centers.
The attitude of the Crown appears to be that it wills not under any circumstances follow up even the most obvious leads, even when those leads come from the admission of perpetrators themselves, “Mr. Leahey complained in a letter to provincial government lawyer William Wilson last week. That letter is part of an application Mr. Leahey will make the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia today asking the government to fund an independent review of its file on the Shelburne School of Boys during the year 1960s and 1970s, when the abuse is alleged to have taken place. As part of that application, Mr. Leahey has also filed the transcripts of two interviews conducted by members of the Department of Judicial independent investigation unit, which is reviewing hundreds of abuse complaints from former youth centre residents. He received the transcripts from the province on Dec. 31, 1997.
Last May, a former counselor at the Shelburne School of Boys Paul Aucoin, told two provincial investigators that he had sexual encounters with three boys at Shelburne when he was a teacher there 25 years ago. According to a transcript for the interview with investigators Gordon Legge and Allan Richardson, Mr. Aucoin made the admission after the denied allegations by two former Shelburne residents that the counselors tried to physically force them to engage in oral sex with him. Mr. Aucoin told investigators that he was acknowledging the sexual encounters, which included oral sex and foundling, “as a sort of way for me to try make peace with myself. He said he never meant to hurt anyone and he felt remorse and shame over what happened at Shelburne in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was there. Its embarrassing and shaming and very painful for me to be his honest, “Mr. Aucoin said during the interview.
According to the transcript, Mr. Legge told Mr. Aucoin that the information from the interview would be forwarded to the government of Nova Scotia and possibly to the RCMP, which is conducting a massive investigation of the more then 1,400 allegations of abuse at Shelburne and several other Nova Scotia youth centers. Mr. Leahey said in an interview that the investigators failed to press Mr. Aucoin for information about the abuse he was involved in and didn’t even mention the allegations of Martin Smith, who is now suing the province alleging that senior government officials were aware of allegations against some Shelburne counselors and failed to protect him when he says he was abused by Mr. Aucoin and another counselor, Patrick MacDougall in the late 1960s and 1970s. Mr. Leahey questioned whether the Department of Justice had made any attempt to locate and offer counseling to the boys Mr. Aucion named in his interview with investigators or if the file was forwarded to the RCMP for further investigations.
