Killed cult leader's sons speak out
By QMI AGENCY
MONTREAL -- Francois Theriault, son of former cult leader, Roch "Moses" Theriault, said he wasn't surprised when he heard his father was found dead in his jail cell earlier this year.
"We knew that it was going to happen one day or another," he said, adding that what did surprise him was that his father hadn't been killed earlier.
François, along with his brother Roch-Sylvain, gave an exclusive interview to QMI Agency Friday night about his father, who led a religious cult in Quebec and Ontario during the 1980s.
Roch-Sylvain, right and François Thériault posing for the camera before speaking with Denis Levesque in the studios of LCN, TVA, in Montreal, Quebec, March 11, 2011.
Theriault, known as Moses, manipulated and physically abused his followers, including hacking a woman's right arm off. In 1988, he used a knife to disembowel his wife Solange Boilard during a cult ritual.
He was sentenced to life in prison for her murder in 1993.
In late February, Theriault was killed by a fellow inmate at Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick. He was 63.
Roch-Sylvain said that although he understands how people could rejoice at the demise of his father, "I never wanted it to end this way."
Since they were young, Theriault's two sons lived in horror.
It began in 1980, when the young boys joined their father's commune in Quebec.
Almost immediately the boys were subjected to their father's violent, drunken and sexual acts.
"I was so scared of him when I was small," said Francois, "He would say my name and I would tremble like a leaf."
When their father drank, his sons knew he would pay them a "visit."
And they weren't the only ones in the commune Theriault would visit when drunk. François and Roch-Sylvain remember the disembowelling of Solange Boilard.
"He was a shark," said Francois, "he needed to see blood."
In spite of their childhood, the two men took back control of their lives. In 2009, they published a book about their experience. They said that talking publicly about their father frees them from the horrors they lived through.
And although the memories of their violent childhood will never leave them, they claim they won't pass anything on to their children.
"My little girl was looking at me," said Francois, "and I told her that she'll never have to experience anything like that with me."
This article was found at:
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2011/03/12/17593816.html
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http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2011/03/12/17593816.html
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Cult leader Roch Thériault's killer gets life
ReplyDeleteCBC News March 5, 2012
A 60-year-old man has been sentenced to life in prison for slaying a notorious cult leader at Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick last February.
Matthew Gerrard MacDonald, of Port au Port, N.L., was scheduled to have a jury trial date set Monday in Moncton Court of Queen’s Bench on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of his fellow inmate Roch Thériault.
But MacDonald re-elected to be tried by judge alone and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder, said Crown prosecutor Anthony Allman told CBC News.
The Quebec-born Thériault, 63, was found dead near his cell at the Dorchester institution on Feb. 26, 2011. At the time, police reported that he had been involved in an altercation with another inmate and died as a result of his injuries.
MacDonald was seen on a video from the institution going into Thériault’s cell, said Allman.
“He then is seen emerging and pulling a shank from Mr. Thériault’s neck," Allman told CBC News. "And then he goes to the guards and says in rather cruder words than these that he just killed Mr. Thériault.”
Second-degree murder means MacDonald intended to kill Thériault, but that it wasn't premeditated.
MacDonald "had expressed some animosity towards Mr. Thériault" and his prior convictions for killing a woman and maiming another.
"He said some things about Mr. Thériault’s prior record for convictions which involved girls and women."
Thériault led a cult from 1977 to 1989, first in Ste-Marie de Beauce, Quebec, then in Gaspé, and then Burnt River, Ontario, where he lived with eight women, his 26 children and several followers.
He killed his wife, cult member Solange Boislard, by disembowelling her, and chopped off the right arm of another commune wife, Gabrielle Lavallee, with a chainsaw.
In 1993, Thériault was sentenced to life in prison at Dorchester, a medium-security facility southeast of Moncton that houses about 400 inmates.
Since MacDonald is already serving a life sentence for a previous murder, the Crown didn't have to make any submissions for the sentencing.
“All murders you get life imprisonment; the issue is parole,” said Allman.
“If it's a second-degree murder, it's normally 10 years or whatever the court orders. But where it's a second-degree murder by a person who already has a murder on his record, then the automatic sentence is life without parole for 25 years,” he said.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2012/03/05/nb-cult-theriault-murder-sentence.html