like Gerald Regan, Gabriel Wortman’s abuse of children was “known to the the neighbours” “an open secret to neighbours”

the answer as to why our best, our only, chance to prevent 23 deaths failed, lies inside Dartmouth Police HQ at 7 Mellor Avenue

What has propelled me away from writing a history of events a hundred years ago to the events of today is the parallels I see between in the neighbourly response to the abuse of vulnerable children by premier Gerald Regan 50 years ago and the neighbourly response to the abuse of vulnerable children by millionaire medical professional Gabriel Wortman 20 years ago.

In both cases, I wonder if the outraged response was muted a little by the thought of taking on a wealthy professional with lots of powerful connections ?

The media always acts as if the terms “ open secret” and “known to the police” live on different planets.

But if all the police force in Truro, active and retired, sense that if a car as been joy-ridded it was probably done so by Jimmy-the K Wilson, that is an “open secret” to them and others, as well as fulfilling the claim that Jimmy the K Wilson is “known to police” (for joyriding).

If we returned to the “old fashioned” idea of individual police patrolling the same neighbourhoods consistently, the metaphorical distance between a repeated criminal activity being an ‘open secret’ to neighbours and an activity ‘known to police’ would collapse.

Neighbours, it is claimed, on and around the bottom of Pine Street Dartmouth in the late 1990s knew Gabriel Wortman to be consistently mean to children, beating several of them up.

Did police know this - even if the victims declined perhaps to press charges ?

Did police constable Laurie Cuvelier did know this?

And did this influence his  2001 laying of a felony charge of 266(a) criminal assault involving a vulnerable child given to Gabriel Wortman after a 2 month thorough investigation?

A charge laid against GW when he moved a few hundred metres down the hill from his old home on Pine St to his new home on Portland Street , there to beat up child Matt M for standing ‘too close’ to his clinic door ?

Did lack of this “open secret/ known to police” knowledge influence Constable Ronald Josey to abruptly reduce this thoroughly investigated charge just a few day later, from 5 years in jail to a $50 fine summary charge, a mysterious deed done during the very quiet New Years  Day weekend ?

These are questions best answered by the pair of constables, under oath, at peril of perjury, in a public inquiry or royal commission.....