MONTREAL — Convicted pedophile priest Brian Boucher showed unacceptable and worrisome behaviour for years which the Catholic Church covered up or ignored before he was eventually investigated, charged and convicted with sexually assaulting two minor boys, a new report reads. Who knew what and when? They are the two questions about Boucher that Justice Pepita G. Capriolo answers in her 276-page report detailing decades of questionable, troubling and criminal behaviour that Catholic Church authorities failed to deal with. "The primary culprit is the lack of accountability of the people involved in Boucher's education, training and career," Capriolo writes. "Complaints were 'passed on' and no one took responsibility for acting on them." A TROUBLING HISTORY Boucher was involved in the Catholic Church from his time as a catechist in the mid-1980s to 2019 when he was convicted and sentenced on two counts of sexually assaulting a minor. The report notes that his "suitability" as a seminarian and priest was questioned for years before a serious investigation began in 2015. Though no parent or child had come forward with assault accusations before 2016, the report notes that it "is no cause for premature exoneration of the Church authorities." "Many people had complained about Boucher's unacceptable behaviour over the years: he was rude, authoritarian, overly intense, intransigent, homophobic, racist, misogynist, and verbally, and sometimes even physically, aggressive," the report reads. "These complaints were repeatedly reported to his superiors." In addition, the report reads that rumours about his interest in young boys "had been circulating since the 1980s and communicated to those in charge of the Grand Seminaire de Montreal as well as to the Archdiocese." Boucher was even observed having a "very close and worrisome relationship with a young boy" at the end of the 1990s. Capriolo writes that no investigation was initiated into Boucher's conduct despite concerns brought in "ever-increasing detail." "A contemporary unwanted sexual advance directed at an 18-year-old was dismissed and erased from the collective written memory of the Church," Capriolo writes. "Later, heartbreaking abusive relationship with a 19-year-old student under Boucher's tutelage when he was Chaplain of the Newman Centre became the tipping point... to send Boucher for psychological treatment!" Later in the report, Capriolo details complaints about the priest’s conduct with young boys as early as 1985. The psychiatric evaluation, Capriolo writes, gave the impression of Boucher's conduct being fixed, and had the "disastrous effect" of shielding Boucher from suspicion until Bishop Thomas Dowd's 2015 investigation. Capriolo’s report shows that after the 2003 psych report, another complaint in 2006 was quickly dismissed, and a 2011 senior church official's summary of Boucher's failings in order to stop his reappointment as pastor of a parish was not heeded and Boucher was reappointed. That official left on extended sick leave. In 2003, Church authorities could have used the Advisory Committee on the Sexual Abuse of Minors but didn't, even though they had sent Boucher for a psychiatric evaluation. "Unfortunately," Capriolo writes, "neither its chairman nor the Vicar General, both bishops, thought it appropriate to refer to the Boucher case to that body." Boucher was finally caught in his lies. "He claimed that, during his sabbatical studies in Washington, he had been the victim of sexual abuse by a much younger man, a fellow priest," Capriolo writes. "Bishop Dowd investigated this claim and quickly realized, given the evidence he found Boucher had been the perpetrator and not the victim. Once a broader investigation was started, Bishop Dowd discovered the existence of at least two child victims." Capriolo writes that "limiting the obligation to intervene to cases of sexual abuse of minors is a mistake," and that "had sufficient attention been given to the complaints made by the two young men, 18 and 19 years old respectively, who had been Boucher's victims, his abuse might have been stopped sooner." Capriolo blasts the missed opportunities and the excuses, such as "I was not in authority", "it was not my department," and the historically tragic "I was following orders." Capriolo writes that even if there was no clear evidence of sex abuse of a minor before 2015, there "was ample reason to be concerned and to check whether harm had indeed occurred." INVESTIGATION Archbishop Christian Lepine mandated the "who knew what when" report. Capriolo worked with church liaison Dowd, who began investigating Boucher in 2015, to analyze hundreds of documents and interview over 60 witnesses. She, however, was not directed by the church, according to the report, and had autonomous access to documents including those in the "secret archives," which Dowd was not permitted to consult. Capriolo writes that the "culture of secrecy" at the Church "caused the disappearance of important documents and the general lack of a paper trail." She was, as a result, forced to search in several departments of the diocese and outside sources. "Secrecy is everywhere in this file," Capriolo writes. "Secret archives, secret hiding places for sensitive documents so secret that they have been eliminated completely." RECOMMENDATIONS Capriolo lists 31 recommendations in her report focusing on the following: The recommendations include:
