GRAPHIC CONTENT warning: Some of the details in this story are disturbing.
A former Ottawa RCMP officer and his wife have been found guilty in the horrifying abuse and torture of the officer’s son.
“Being able to place both in handcuffs was satisfying for me,” said Ottawa Police Detective Joanne Marelic who investigated the case.
The former Mountie, 45, was found guilty of two counts of aggravated assault, one count of sexual assault causing bodily harm, one count of unlawful confinement, one count of failing to provide the necessities of life, one count of assault with a weapon, one count of careless storage of a firearm and one count of carless storage of ammunition. His wife, the boy’s step-mother, was found guilty of assault with a weapon and failing to provide the necessities of life.
Justice Robert Maranger called the evidence “unequivocal and overwhelming”, adding “that a parent could do the things that were done to (the boy) was gut-wrenching.”
The boy, 11 years old at the time of the abuse, was found wandering the bitter-cold streets of his Kanata home in February 2013. He was naked, near-starved, described by officers as a boy who “looked like he had just come out of a concentration camp” after enduring six long months of abuse.
Sgt. Tracy Butler, now retired, worked on the case from the beginning. She calls this is the worst case of abuse the Ottawa Police Sexual Assault and Child Abuse unit has ever investigated, “it’s the biggest case I’ve ever been involved in.”
Butler says the level of torture and the fact that it involved an RCMP officer made the investigation complex, “I think we pulled it all together in the beginning and we did our jobs very effectively given the outcome that we have today and that justice has been served for this little boy.”
The boy had been handcuffed and tortured in the family’s basement, starved and beaten, his father torched the child’s genitals with a barbeque lighter.
“The fact that this half-starved, burned and battered 11 year old could somehow summon up the strength to escape his cruel captivity and later seemingly rise above it, is a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit,” Justice Maranger told the court.
The judge found the boy’s heartbreaking and courageous testimony to be truthful and deeply disturbing. The father captured some of the torture on his cell phone, saying he believed his son was possessed and was trying to beat the devil out of him.
“They were very difficult to watch,” said Justice Maranger, “the viewer is left with images that are forever etched in the darkest, saddest recesses of that person’s memory.”
The former Mountie blamed the abuse on PTSD, a troubled life growing up in Lebanon, but the Judge didn’t agree, “while he may have suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, I reject the notion that a ‘mental disorder’ caused him to be in a state of dissociation to the extent that he was incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of his acts”
For the police investigators who helped save the boy and find him justice, the guilty verdicts will be moments they will never forget, “it’s been a long, long time for him and now he can go on, he’s got tremendous support from family and he can just move on,” says Det. Marelic, “today was a good day for him.”
The boy’s step-mother will be sentenced December 2nd, his father will face sentencing at a later date. Both parents had their bails revoked, and now remain behind bars.
