The Children's Monster

"He took us out for movies and candies and pizza.
"It was almost an instant transformation. Because (once) he had guardianship it was like, 'Now you're mine and nobody can stop me. We had to eat in a certain amount of time and if not he would hit us right off the chairs.
"That's when he tried to teach me how to masturbate. He was making me touch myself, and then he said, 'No, I'll show you how to do it while you eat'."
Germaine Gallant, 41, Ottawa

"He brought me in the room and said, 'I'm going to show you what happens in a normal family.' Just like that. He pulled down his pants and kind of nudged me toward him. He had brainwashed me into thinking that this is the way that families show love.
"I fought back when I turned 13. I told him he wasn't going to touch me again."
Johanne Simard, 40, Ottawa

Sisters Johanne (left) and Germaine, then four and five years old, just before they were taken into the care of their uncle and abuser: Gilles Simard.  Photograph by: Julie Oliver, Ottawa Citizen

"She was crying about a nervous breakdown that day. She said, 'You're going to live with your uncle for a while. I can't take nothing no more." And that's when the two little girls, sisters, learned in 1978 that life was about to change for them. They would be living temporarily with their very favourite uncle "Beaver". That is when soon afterward the little girls learned some life lessons.

Beginning with food deprivation, beatings, sponge baths and sexual interference. That would eventually lead to rape. They lived with their uncle for about five years, learning life's lessons. Games of hide-and-seek for example; fun under ordinary circumstances, and horrifying torture for the little girls who found this to be a game they really would far have preferred not to play. "I'd get spankings if I got caught too fast."

Uncle Beaver taught his little nieces that if they wanted to eat they would have to please him first. Joanne's memory is vague on how old she was when she was first ordered to perform oral sex. Her sister says the horribly atrocious experiences with sexual maulings began when they were five and seven years old.And these are the conditions in which the two little girls lived for the next five years of their lives.

They were traumatized by their experience. And unable to share their lives afterward together, when they became older. Each has a family of her own, with two children apiece, four boys, ranging in age from their early teens to early 20s. They decided one day, independently of one another, to come forward with their story. They hadn't communicated with one another for years.

But they had seen a news item of a Gilles Simard, a man who drove transport trucks, taxis and even ferried children with special needs around for a company specializing in that kind of social service. He had been arrested in 2010 for sharing child exploitation files online. On investigation police discovered a collection of almost 25,000 videos and more than 5,500 graphic images of children being sexually assaulted.

The man claimed to have just fallen into the situation, after having discovered images online. They awakened a latent pedophilia streak in him, poor man, he was ill and needed treatment. His story elicited some sympathy from a judge who sentenced him to two years less a day. Unaware of the man's adventures in violating the dignity, human rights and childhood of his two little nieces. Knowing only that Simard had fallen into an online child pornography trap.

After Johanne and Germaine testified at a preliminary hearing things changed. Their uncle pleaded guilty to a number of charges brought against him then, including incest, rape, sexual assault, gross indecency and assault causing bodily harm. The girls, women now with grown families of their own, spoke of how empowering it felt to get their uncle's name "out there".

"Before, I couldn't even say a word without breaking into tears", said Johanne. "To be able to have a relationship with her kids (sister Germaine) for her to have a relationship with mine, it just means a lot to me. This is the most we've been together since we were kids."