Ex-Scout leader jailed for child sex crimes

It took some of the boys, now grown men, 40 years before they revealed their darkest secrets.

The sex-attack victims went on to lead troubled lives, and all held deep feelings of shame, guilt and denial. One victim died of a heroin overdose. Another died after driving his motorcycle into a pole.

The legal case against disgraced Ottawa Boy Scout leader Donald Joseph Sullivan, 68, came to an end on Thursday when Ontario Court Justice Norman Boxall sentenced him to six years in prison for molesting 11 boys in the 1970s.

Sullivan groomed and then molested the boys, aged between eight and 10, when he was a leader from 1972 to 1977 with Scouts Canada’s 80th Ottawa Troop down in the church basement at Immaculate Heart of Mary on Alta Vista Drive.

He was fired in 1977, but wasn’t charged at the time.

Sullivan, who earlier this year pleaded guilty to five counts of gross indecency and one count of sex assault, molested the boys at sleepovers at his apartment, campouts, in the showers and in his car.

Boxall said Sullivan betrayed his position of trust. The child-sex predator said nothing before he was escorted to jail.

His victims said a lot at an emotional sentencing hearing in August. The court heard from nine of the 11 victims. They said their lives were shattered.

“You were in a position of power, a Scout leader in charge of so many kids, teaching us right from wrong. … You abused that in the worst way possible,” one victim told court.

Prosecutor Sabrina Goldfarb noted a psychiatric assessment of Sullivan in which he admitted to molesting 30 boys when he was in his mid-20s. The victims came forward in different ways. One victim told court he came forward after reading a story about Sullivan in the Citizen.

“As I read it, I immediately started crying and handed the (story) to my spouse, who didn’t understand my reaction since I had never shared my secret, despite being together for over 20 years.”

One victim spoke of the “twisted damage” Sullivan inflicted, and recalled feeling powerless during a sex attack.

The mother of two young boys who were abused by Sullivan detailed the “destructive path of no return” her youngest son took: quitting school, running away, then attempting suicide. He died of a heroin overdose in 1999.

With files from Aedan Helmer.