Chilling and disturbing testimony from a father, and suspended RCMP officer, on trial for torturing his 11-year old son, inside an Ottawa courtroom on Tuesday.

The man, who we can’t name in order to protect the identity of his son, was on the stand mounting his own defence for the second day.

The father admitted to gruesome details of how he abused his son, “I felt like he was in the wrong. That’s the zone I was in. If I untied him, I worried he would hit my kid or rape my wife. I was one-hundred percent, one-million percent convinced of this.”

The father described a bad, problem child, who he says was a sexual deviant. He said his son was obsessed with sexuality, describing him as “living with the devil”. His son’s behavior brought up old demons of his own, reminding the man of the time he was sexually assaulted as a child growing up in Lebanon.

“I was at war with my son, he was the enemy,” he said. So the father admitted to tying the boy up in the basement of the family’s Kanata home. “I tied him because I didn’t want him to move anymore in the house, I thought I would die” he told the court, “I had bought handcuffs, I cuffed him to a wooden pole in the basement.”

He tied him the first time for about 15 minutes, but then the discipline became more intense. He admitted to using tie wraps, chains and lock “as often as needed” over the next month. He even forced the boy to sleep in the basement, tied in a sleeping bag, for up to three consecutive nights. “I worried he would hit my kid and rape my wife.”

“The more I tried to control the situation, the more he took a fit at me.”

The father admitted to being suicidal, suffering severe PTSD and depression. The father continued to lose control fast, saying his discipline intensified as he began to hit, slap and burn his son.

“When I hit my son with a piece of wood, he was talking, I walked by him, slapping him with the back of my hand. Apparently I broke his tooth and I didn’t know a piece of it lodged in the back of my hand.”

The boy’s step mother is also on trial, but her husband says she never witnessed any of the hitting, slapping or burning, “she just saw her husband falling to pieces” he said.

“I couldn’t believe the man I was. I couldn’t believe myself. I hated everything about my life. I did not observe my son having pity on me.”

The father will be back on the stand Wednesday for the Crown’s cross examination.