Priest blames girls for abuse he caused

Mr. Bailey told a crowd of about 200 priests, deacons and other religious staff gathered at a sexual abuse workshop that he recently met with Sylvestre in jail to try "to understand what made him tick."

 

Sylvestre was under no obligation to speak to Mr. Bailey, but did so nonetheless, giving the lawyer disturbing insight into the84-year-old's distorted psyche.

"According to him, these eight-year-old girls planned the destruction of their own lives," Mr. Bailey said.

Sylvestre was sentenced in October to three years in a penitentiary for sexually abusing 47 girls between the ages of eight and 15 over a period of 30 years in five parishes across southwestern Ontario. Since his conviction, 10 more women have come forward alleging his abuse.

In an effort to dispel the myth that pedophiles suffer a "mere moral failure," Mr. Bailey presented excerpts from his conversation with Sylvestre that shows the disgraced priest's mental illness, or"distinct psychological pathology."

When speaking to Mr. Bailey of the young girls he molested, Sylvestre talked as though the children conspired to have him abuse them.

"These girls that came over there every day, they planned it," Sylvestre told Mr. Bailey. "I could hear them talking and they'd come in and sit on a chair and their skirt would be up to their crotch.? Well, it was kind of attracting."

When a principal of a school accused Sylvestre of improperly touching the girls, the priest turned the blame on the principal and the little girls. "The principal ... came over and accused me of touching them," Sylvestre told Mr. Bailey. "I said, 'Why are they here? Aren't they supposed to stay in the schoolyard? Get them out of here.' "

According to Mr. Bailey, Sylvestre also blamed London Bishop Ronald Fabbro. "He's the one who started the whole avalanche by freeing Irene [Deschenes]from her gag order," Sylvestre told Mr. Bailey, referring to one of his victims.

The workshop is one of two being held by the Diocese of London as a means of educating the staff and raising awareness of sexual abuse in the Church in order to help prevent it in the future, said diocese spokesman Ron Pickersgill.