the heart of the Regan Trial was not rape but BETRAYAL : parents being betrayed by the folksy neighbour they trusted

Back in those naive good old days, we thought our 14 years old were perfectly safe babysitting next door....

When I closely examined the charges laid against Gerald Regan back in the mid-1990s, I did so with a series of large scale ordnance maps at the reference department of the old Halifax Library.

I had long sensed that the real deepest depths of Regan’s crimes was not rape - certainly not the rape of strangers - but rather something all parents could understand - and fear : your own children being destroyed by an individual that you personally and willingly had placed them in the care of !

Today we think of priests or sports coaches in these circumstances, doing bad stuff a mile or two out of our sight.

However, in this case, it was something bad that happened even closer to home, a situation even worse.

Imagine looking out your living room window to the living room window of the house right across from you, the home of Jerry and Carol and all their wonderful kids.

Your daughter cum babysitter is minding those kids from across the street.

She is literally in eye shot and ear shot of you : you feel secure in her safety.

And yet, in that same living room, right before your eyes if you had been spying ( but of course you haven’t - the Regans are a wonderful family) your daughter is being molested by the ‘man of the house’. The guy you trust, the devout catholic from your own parish.

When I mentally put the addresses on the babysitter charges on a large scale map of central Halifax, against Regan’s home there at the time of the crimes, I let out a low whistle.

“When any parent hear this, when the jury hears this (for most jurors are or were parents) this guy is going away for a long long stretch.”

Unfortunately a very clever man - the judge - felt as I did : the babysitter cases were dynamite against Regan.

He tossed the babysitter cases and from then on the trial was doomed : I knew it would fail.

Just as the Portapique Inquiry is going to be a yet another whitewash of powerful Grits, arranged by powerful Grits....