Teen tells jury he was molested for years by businessman
A 19-year-old man told a jury Niagara businessman Jeffrey Cairns molested him for years but that he didn’t come forward until after other young men disclosed their own allegations of abuse.
“It was something I buried so deep,” the university student said Monday in Superior Court of Justice in St. Catharines. “In my mind, I tried to forget.”
The witness testified the abuse began when he was a child and continued until he was 16 or 17.
Cairns, 60, has pleaded not guilty to a number of charges including sexual assault and sexual interference before a jury of seven men and five women.
The witness said he realized the defendant’s conduct was predatory after learning he had been arrested on child-sex charges.
“It made me realize what was done to me was wrong,” he said.
The teen recalled several instances for which he claimed Cairns would pin him down, remove his pants and underwear and fondle his genitals.
“I was trying my hardest to wriggle free but he overpowered me,” he told assistant Crown attorney Robert Mahler.
The young man admitted his recollection of some of the events were “faint memories.”
He testified his family would meet up with the Cairns family a number of times a year.
He described the defendant’s wife as a “wonderful woman who’s very caring and compassionate and always loved me unconditionally.” Cairns’ sons, he said, were “the brothers I never had.”
He said the defendant would rub his genitals or his bottom, either on top of or under his clothing, on a number of occasions. “Every time I saw this man he would try something against me,” he said. “Nothing that man ever did to me was ordinary.”
The witness said after Cairns was arrested in August 2016 his parents sat him down and asked if the defendant had ever engaged in inappropriate behaviour with him. The teen said he didn’t inform his parents of what had happened.
He made a statement to Niagara Regional Police in October 2018.
Defence counsel Wayne Cunningham suggested Cairns never acted inappropriately toward the young man and that none of the incidents occurred.
“That is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard in my whole entire life,” the witness replied.
The lawyer also questioned why the teen continued to have contact with the man he now claims sexually abused him.
The witness said he “pretended everything was OK” because he wanted to maintain a relationship with Cairns’ wife and sons.
“There’s nothing but rage and hate for that man in my heart,” he said.
The jury heard earlier from a Niagara man, now 23, who testified he was sexually abused by Cairns starting when he was 14.
He told the jury Cairns would perform oral sex on him, and also have the teen perform oral sex on a man he described as a “second father.” The complainant’s brother also testified to inappropriate behaviour by the defendant.
Those incidents are said to have occurred in St. Catharines and elsewhere between March 2010 and March 2011.
Cairns is president of Charlesway Corp. Ltd., a Niagara-based private equity investment firm, and was a member of the Brock University’s board of trustees. He resigned from the board in August 2016, a day after his initial arrest. He was also the former commanding officer of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment.
The trial continues today before Judge Paul Sweeny.