Man defends having sex with girl, 10, he ‘married’

MONTREAL – The leader of a fringe evangelical movement kept his so-called marriage to a 10-year-old girl hidden from her mother, a Quebec court heard yesterday.

Daniel Cormier, who headed the now-defunct Church of Downtown Montreal, says the marriage gave him the right to have sexual relations with the girl.

But as the girl’s mother was cross-examined by Cormier, she denied ever being aware of a marriage.

“My first knowledge of this so-called marriage was when court proceedings started,” said the woman, who like her daughter cannot be identified.

“I spoke to (my daughter) and (she) doesn’t remember any kind of marriage, She doesn’t remember marrying you.”

Cormier, 57, stands accused of a variety of sex-related crimes, including sexual exploitation and sexual assault. He is also charged with sexually exploiting a different 16-year-old girl.

He completely denies the allegations regarding the 16-year-old and says he did nothing illegal with the 10-year-old, who is now 18.

As justification, he has cited their 1999 marriage in the church he founded.

The mother has said she thought the ceremony was a birthday party for her daughter and even baked a cake for the occasion.

Cormier’s church, however, was described by another witness who took the stand yesterday as a “sect” with a distinct misogynist bent.

“There were rules of the church. … The women were underneath and the men were higher,” said Josiane Beaudoin, who frequented the church for several months in 1998.

“They worked by the methods of the Old Testament. Everything that came after didn’t count.”

The girl whom Cormier is accused of molesting knew him because he presided over the marriage of her mother and a man who, like the mother, was a former drug addict.

Cormier was arrested in 2003 after a social worker alerted police about the situation.

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