Girl tells court ‘secret’ about daycare abuse

She kept it a secret until it just had to come out.

A young girl testified Thursday at the trial of Kimberly Byron Moskalewski, 53, that the man who sometimes looked after her while she was at a private home daycare in Pierrefonds run by his wife once invited him to touch his penis.

The girl, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, said she kept it a secret for months because she loved Moskalewski’s wife, Lucille Bosc, and feared she would lose the friends she had made at the daycare.

While testifying at the Montreal courthouse before Quebec Court Judge Louise Bourdeau, the girl’s mother said her daughter’s secret suddenly spilled out l ong after Moskalewski allegedly invited her to touch him.

The mother said she and her daughter were having dinner at a restaurant in 2009, with the girl’s grandmother, when she suddenly appeared to fall ill and began to cry.

“She said ‘ Kim told me something. I have to tell you what it is’,” the girl’s mother recounted.

The mother said she ultimately decided to tell other parents with kids at the daycare and to never bring her daughter back.

She said she decided to call police in 2011 after Moskalewski was arrested in a child porn case.

The court watched a videotaped statement the girl gave police on Aug. 15, 2011.

While answering questions from Sgt. Det. Brigitte Guerard, of the Montreal police Child Sexual Exploitation Unit, the girl said she believes she was alone in the basement with Moskalewski when the alleged incident happened.

The girl also testified after the video was played and confirmed what she had said.

The girl said that while she was preparing to take a nap in the basement of the home, Moskalewski said: “It wouldn’t bother me if you touched my penis.”

She said Moskalewski was lying on a sofa in the basement at the time and that she, while lying in a small bed next to the sofa, closed her eyes and pretended to fall asleep.

She said nothing else of a sexual nature followed the invitation.

The girl also testified that months before the invitation she told her mother that she once caught Moskalewski watching a film “with women who were all naked in it” while she and other children were at the daycare.

The girl’s mother testified she discussed the matter with Bosc and was told it would never happen again.

Bosc, testifying as a witness for the prosecution, said the girl’s mother told her that her daughter had caught Moskalewski masturbating while watching pornography.

Moskalewski, who testified in his defence Thursday, denied that the incident involved him masturbating. He said that “on about six” occasions he watched pornography on a television in his living room while his wife was looking after children.

Moskalewski also denied that he ever invited the girl to touch him.

“I have no idea why she is making that allegation,” Moskalewski said.

Moskalewski said he rarely was home on weekdays while his wife ran the daycare.

“I was never home alone with one child there,” he said.

The case is to resume on June 11.

Moskalewski pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in February. A sentence hearing in that case is scheduled for June 20.