Verdict today

Lawyers on both sides agreed Thursday that the case against a local priest, currently on trial charged with sexually molesting a teenage boy about 10 years ago, turns on issues of credibility.

Rene Paul Emile Labelle, 64, has pleaded not guilty on all counts and, testifying in his own defence on Wednesday, denied point by point the specifics of allegations that he sexually assaulted the boy, touched him for a sexual purpose and invited the teen to touch him for a sexual purpose. The latter two charges are particularized in the indictment as aggravated by his being a person in a position of trust or authority at the time.

Labelle, who is now retired, surrendered his parish in the Brewers Mills area just prior to his arrest in January 2012, withdrawing as well from service as a priest-chaplain at Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School under the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board system.

He’s been involved in eastern Ontario’s Roman Catholic community for more than 30 years, however, serving as a priest at parishes in Kingston, Belleville, Centreville, Read, Lansdowne, Rockport, Flinton-Ardoch and on Wolfe Island, as well as chaplaincies at Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf and Nicholson Catholic College in Belleville and Regiopolis-Notre Dame, Holy Cross and Loyola Community Learning Centre in Kingston.

Labelle’s accuser has testified that the priest molested him on Wolfe Island in his mid-teens after he’d been invited to spend the day and sleep over at the rectory of Sacred Heart of Mary, where Labelle was appointed in early July 2004.

But Labelle testified in front of Justice Timothy D. Ray that there was no sleep-over. He said he put the teen on the 5 or 5:30 p.m. ferry the same day and sent him home in time for supper with his family.

Assistant Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis told the judge “the case really comes down to whether you accept that (the complainant) stayed overnight. Because if he did stay overnight, then Mr. Labelle has some serious explaining to do.”

On that point, Justice Ray noted that both of the complainant’s parents recalled their son was driven to the ferry dock and picked up by one of them the following day.

The judge asked defence lawyer John Ecclestone if he was arguing that they were mistaken.

Ecclestone observed that for eight years neither parent knew anything about what their son now says happened. Consequently, “what they really remember,” he said, “is that somebody dropped him off and somebody picked him up.” He told Justice Ray there would be no reason for them to specifically recall whether it was on the same day or different days.

The defence lawyer also urged that his client’s outing with the boy to Big Sandy Bay — where he admittedly lounged around in an abbreviated Speedo-type bathing suit — was nothing more than poor judgment.

“He’s not on trial for failing to cover his backside,” Ecclestone told the judge, and “he’s not on trial for putting himself in a risky situation.”

Ecclestone argued that anyone who puts himself in “an open and trusting relationship” today “is one phone call away from being in the position Rene Labelle is in.”

Laarhuis argued, however, that the complainant “had no motive to fabricate” and “every reason not to fabricate such a serious allegation.”

Before Wolfe Island with Labelle, Laarhuis said, all of the evidence suggests the complainant was a happy kid, a good student and a devout Catholic.

The judge has been told his demeanour began to change in his senior year of high school. Laarhuis referenced the descriptions his parents gave of his spiral through a crisis of faith, depression, breakdown and suicidal ideation. “That was all real,” he told the judge. “He didn’t feign that.”

And “if he was looking for someone to blame for his current life situation,” Laarhuis asked the judge to consider, “why would he pick Mr. Labelle?”

Justice Ray will render his decision in the case Friday.

sue.yanagisawa@sunmedia.ca