2. William M Leahey is living proof that the political spectrum is not a straight line
but a circle walk for enough out on the right wing and you'll met someone coming
at you from a left wing.
Leahey, 43 is a self-described ""tenacious and aggressive litigation lawyer and
partner in the firm Leahey Nearing. With the force and conviction of a successful
courtroom lawyer he lectures reporter on how government should stop being so
intrusive get out peoples lives, lower taxes, and let them get on in life by being
responsible for themselves.
If he were interested in political he says with a laugh that it would be with the
Reform party and you know how much support I'd get. We could fit the whole
party in here, " he says referring to the four setter Barring Street Offices.
But i am not he adds i am not a member of any party. I have no inside
connections. I'll never be a judge. He laughs again and that's just fine.
Leahey has become every corrupt politician's worst nightmare(and in Nova
Scotia that covers a lot of ground): a righteous man with a mission.
3. Since 1992 he has been vigorously pursuing the provincial government for
compensation for men and women who were sexually and physically abused at
children's while they were wards at provincially run homes for girls in Truro and
for boys in Shelburne.
Leahey discovered the issue when Gail Roose came to him in 1992 for help with
her marriage breakdown and added she was also trying to get over the
psychological damage of having been beaten and kept as a sex slave by a
guard at the truro home when she was 13.
The Guard is now a prison but Leahey and Roose wanted more. He wanted
damages and she wanted to be able to get up on the stand face those people
and tell her story, " Leahey says. They rejected an out of court settlement and
won $75,000 in the compensation. That was raised to $85, 000 on appeal
including $35,000 in punitive damages but Leahey wanted more.
He wanted - still wants because the case is wending its way up to the Supreme
Court of Canada - more in punitive damages for his client and this is at the heart
of what is turning into a crusade for the mild-mannered articulate lawyer.
4. Punitive damages are rarely awarded in Canada because a complainant in this
case Roose has a prove not only negligence but also that the circumstances
were so callous and shocking (in this case that others knew she was being
beaten and raped and did nothing) that the court must punish those people with
additional damages. Both sides are taking the case to the country's top court.
Despite all the publicity and court action about child abuse in schools and
institutions in recent years. Leahey says this is the first time court has upheld
the principle that when the government acts as the protector of last resort for a
child such as Roose - Whose only crime was her mother died of cancer and her
father abandoned her - it does have a responsibility to look after the children it
takes into its care(Lawyers for the province argued Roose was willing
participant in her beatings and rapes)
It established that there were an atmosphere of toleration of pedophilia by the
male guards toward the female children Leahey says and that is the crux of the
issue "You can't change pedophiles
5. They are what they are he says but as far as I'm concerned the people who
protected (them) are worse by far. They who professed to be good. God-fearing
Christians condemned these children to a life of psychological torture and
personality disorders
Using Roose as a fulcrum and his male clients from Shelburne as a level Leahey
has begun prying the lid off RG-72 the huge secret file that is the accumulated
records of the Department of Community Services and its predecessor
departments. The Abuse is a given What Leahey wants to establish is the same sort
of ugliness that came out of the recently aborted Somalia hearings what the chain of
command knew and what if didn't do about it. Leahey can't disclose information
that hasn't been presented in court but says he is close to establishing links up
through the school administration all the way to the minister's office.
When it's over Leahey says he hopes no longer will be able to say "Hire this person
and keep him in that job, regardless of what he's done because he's a good party
worker. It's a tall order considering that proponents of Nova Scotia's ingrained
patronage system recently drove a sitting premier to resign.
What's for Leahey? has be made enough money to be able to take on large
number's of indigent abuse victims? No I can't afford it, and my partner has
reminded me of that fact more than once he says Basically he says, " I hate bullies.
6. Leahey was an asthmatic weak-ling when he was growing up in Dartmouth the
fourth of seven children of a commercial traveler and his stay at home wife and
although he started talking judo lessons at 11 outgrew his asthma at 13 and joined
the military reserves at 16, Leahey like his abuse victims never got over being
bullied as a child.
As a good guilt-ridden catholic he want to St. Francis Xavier University in
Antigonish and studied. economics. He met and married his wife the former Jane
Anne Mackinnon at the end of his second year. They now have four children
between the age of 10 and 18. After the graduation in 1976 she supported them
working as a nurse while he studied law at Dalhousie law school and afterward
until he established a practice.
Leahey says he had no grand plan when he become a lawyer other then to have a
career. He started in real estate law with Spencer and Co. in Halifax in 1980 with
the idea that it would enable him to meet a lot of people. It did but he found the
work boring and gradually switched to litigation work, where he could put his public
speaking sills - learned as a reader at church and in school debating societies - to
good use.
