and had heard about Roch Theriault’s group on ‘Eternal Mountain’. He joined, and was sent by Roch to sleep in the storage shed, along with one of the other member’s son, Samuel.
Samuel had been severely mistreated by Roch, who was angry because the boy was not his own son. If he cried, his father was instructed to roll him in the snow. One night in March, 1981, the drunk Roch decided to circumsize Samuel, and to prepare him, poured ethanol into his mouth. Samuel was found dead the next morning. The blame was instantly passed to Guy Veer. Roch claimed that he had punched the young boy over and over again to stop him crying. A mock court, set up by Roch months later, also came to this conclusion. Guy’s punishment for murdering Samuel was castration, for which Guy even signed a consent form. Roch gave Guy some alcohol, and wound an elastic band around his genitals to perform the operation.
Guy Veer eventually went to the police, and on December 9, 1981, after having received Veer’s statement, the police made another visit to the commune. They arrested four members, including Moses, concerning the death of the child. They were convicted of criminal responsibility and child abandonment. Further, Gabrielle Lavallee was also convicted for having helped Moses with the castration, despite being a nurse and knowing that this operation could have resulted in death.
On December 23, the judge sent an eviction notice to the members still in the commune, and on January 18, 1982, the members still at the commune were evacuated by forest guards.
On September 28, 1982, the four accused members were all found guilty of practising illegal medicine which caused the death of the child. They all received prison sentences, ranging from between nine months to one year. During his time in prison, Moses wrote a book about the life of the commune in the Gaspe forest.
On his release from prison, Roch moved his community to Burnt River, an area just north of Toronto. The locals and authorities were very suspicious of Roch and his followers and treated them very warily. They were caught shop-lifting, and consequently banned, from local stores and they were not granted welfare from the social services, on the basis that they were not a family.
In order to raise some money, Roch set up his own business making and selling bread and pastries door to door. He called the company ‘The Ant Hill Kids’ because of how hard they worked together. With a little more money coming in, Roch began drinking again. His stomach condition worsened, but every time he felt pain, he sent one of his followers to buy him a case of beer to ease it.
In June 1985, the Ontario Provincial Police were alerted to distress calls which had been made from the commune. They arrived to find a drunken Roch, totally naked, clinging to a tree calling ‘Mayday’ into a two-way radio. The other commune members, who had been told that the day had of judgement had finally arrived and to prepare themselves for the end of the world, were found cringing in a shelter.
PUNISHMENT
Roch became increasingly violent. In drunken rages, he would proclaim that all the members of the commune were evil and that he had to strike the devil from them. Mostly, the punishments were humiliating. Sometimes Roch would order his followers to lie down while he urinated on them, other times he ordered them to wipe their faces with each other’s excrement.
When one of the members could take no more of such rituals, he hit Roch in the face, smacking him against the wall. The punishment for this outburst? Circumcision. A small comfort was that Roch ordered another member of the commune to carry out the procedure. Had Roch done it himself, it would have been much worse.
One of the children, who could bear life in the commune no longer having been severely beaten by Roch, fled from the camp. He went to the police and told them that Moses had sexually abused him.
CHILDREN’S AID SOCIETY
The commune was visited by social workers from the Children’s Aid Society, and they remarked how subservient the women of the commune were. None dared to speak unless given permission from Roch.
Roch told the social workers that only one of the women was his wife. The others were just his lovers. He was asked if the eldest girl in the commune, aged nine years, would eventually become his lover, to which he replied that he hoped so.
The Children’s Aid Society kept a close eye on Roch and the commune, and made frequent visits which he greatly disliked. One woman spoke to the CAS workers and told them of Roch’s division of the children into the chosen ones and mere slaves. The ‘slaves’ were used to gratify him sexually, or served as punchbags when he had been drinking and become violent. He would throw them against trees or into the lake. One boy, whom Roch particularly disliked because his droopy eyes were the mark of the devil, was left outside in a wheelbarrow for two hours – the temperature being –10°C. An ambulance was called but the boy had already died by the time it arrived.
Seventeen children were removed from the commune, under warrants issued by the CAS, and placed in foster homes. Their carers reported very unusual behaviour. One boy was scared of men with beards, another terrified by a light being turned on. One eight-year-old child told his foster parents how it had been his job to wash the commune women’s sanitary towels.
More horrific stories emerged from the commune. Roch, seemingly always drunk, used to suspend babies by their ankles above the fire, and ask of their crying mothers which one should be dropped first. Having thrown a child into the lake to cleanse it of the devil, he would not allow the mother to swim out and rescue her drowning baby until it had bobbed up at least three times.
Outside of the commune and in the safety of caring homes, the children were assessed psychologically. All, the reports showed, had been subjected to sexual acts too early in their development. They spoke naively of having had to masturbate Roch, one girl having been forced to do so at the same time as her mother.
Yet despite such intervention and the constant supervision of the police, still the strange practices did not stop. On September 29, 1988, one of the women, Solange Boilard, died after being operated on by Moses. The aim of the procedure was to relieve her of stomach aches, but Roch partially disembowelled her with a kitchen knife during the gruesome operation. The group buried the body, but it was later exhumed. This was repeated three times before they finally left her in peace. Moses took a small piece of her bone which he kept beneath his beard.
GABRIELLE LAVALLEE
On November 5, 1988, Moses tore out eight of Gabrielle’s teeth with pliers as punishment for a reduction in bread sales. After this, Gabrielle fled, but she returned to the group a few days later. She repeated this a couple of times more, leaving but always coming back. She was scared of Moses, but admitted she couldn’t live without him.
Moses noticed that Gabrielle had a paralysed finger and ordered her to show it to him. As she held it out, he cut into it with a hunting knife. He told her she needed to have her hand amputated, explaining that there was a risk of gangrene. He then cut her arm off and attempted to cauterize the wound using a steel rod heated with a blow torch. After this, Gabrielle waited for the right time to leave the group again.
On August 14, Gabrielle left for good. As soon as she arrived in the village she was hospitalized. In hospital, she told a police officer about the treatment she had been subjected to in the commune and disclosed details of Solange Boilard’s ‘operation’. After her statement the police went looking for Moses. Five days later, Moses, two wives and two children were arrested as they prepared to flee Canada for the US.
In October 1990, he was charged with many counts of assault on Gabrielle, and for having caused the death of Solange Boilard. For the latter, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years.
He admitted that many things had happened at Burnt River, and that his alcoholism had brought on his psychological imbalance. He said he would never be able to forgive himself for Solange’s death.
IMPRISONED
Roch Theriault is still in prison. Since his imprisonment in 1989, he has been moved from different prisons across Canada. Yet he still casts a spell over some of his disciples. In each prison, he has received visits from three female members of the group, and has fathered a total of four children by them during this time.
In July 2002, an appeal was launched for his release. This was refused on the grounds that he was still considered a danger to society, and still had drug and alcohol problems. Unusually, Roch welcomed the verdict. Prior to the actual hearing he had even asked not to be released as he had begun to fear the treatment which he anticipated would be waiting for him on the outside.
Gabrielle Lavallee campaigns constantly to keep Roch Theriault in prison. She has written a book about the ordeals she suffered, testified at his parole hearing, and believes that he is a ‘monster’ who should stay behind bars for the rest of his life.
