A suspended Mountie continued his assertions in an Ottawa court today that he had been a victim of abuse and that, in a fog; he had seen his son as the enemy during the time in which he beat and confined him. The Crown prosecutor was having none of that. The focus today was finding the truth and that discussion led to a combative day between the Crown and the accused who maintained he was legally responsible for abusing his son but not morally.

The boy was just 7 years old when he moved in with his father and stepmother after his birth mother died.  Within 4 months of that move, he would spend his first night sleeping in the unfinished basement as punishment.

"He was out of control from the moment he arrived," the father testified in court today, "I was constantly putting out fires." 

The 44-year-old father is a suspended RCMP officer, on trial, along with his 36-year-old wife, for confining his son and denying him the necessities of life.  The father is also charged with sexual assault.

The man told court that he had hired a child psychologist to ostensibly deal with his son's behavior. When the doctor suggested that the father was "terrorizing his son", court heard that the father ended sessions.

The accused has maintained throughout the Crown's cross examination that he was a man under duress, driven by the demons from his past to view his own son as a demon.

"I don't know what the hell I was doing,” he told court, “why I beat my son, why I burned him."

He has agreed to the abuse, but is mounting a defense, trying to prove he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after he says he was raped as child in Lebanon; that he internalized this abuse and saw his son as the enemy.

After 4 years of living in this situation, the son escaped from the chains binding him in the basement and managed to flee the house while rest of family was shopping. He was 11 years old at this point in time and weighed 50 pounds. Doctors at CHEO, who examined him, said he almost starved to death.

When the father returned home and found him missing, he called 911.  That was February 12, 2013. 

"I’m guilty of this,” he told the 911 operator, “I did bad things with him. I did bad things to him and I regret it."

From here, followed a frustrating exchange between the Crown, trying to prove this man knew exactly what he was doing, and the father maintaining he was living in a fog.

At one point, the Crown presented a 6-foot long piece of wood flooring; similar to what the father admits he used to hit his son.

"Did you hit him on the arm?" the Crown asked.

"I don't know," he answered.

"Did you hit him on the stomach or the head?"

"I don't know," he repeated.

He said he remembers hitting and burning his son but added he didn't rationalize what he was doing.  The trial continues tomorrow.