William M. Leahey - General Interest Periodicals

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William M. Leahey
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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 didnt 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.

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