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Four months later, citing her “enormous stress,” Ms. Doucet withdrew her opposition to Mr. Ryan’s application for full custody. The girl, who turns 13 this year, lives happily with Mr. Ryan and his fiancé, Shannon Huntley, in Angus, Ont. She hasn’t heard from her mother in three years, says Mr. Ryan. “Not a phone call, not even a Christmas card or birthday card.”

Through her lawyer in Halifax, Nicole Ryan refused to comment for this story. “Nicole wants to put the matter behind her and [will] not give any further interviews,” Joel Pink explained in an email. “We were not impressed with the lack of investigative reporting of Michael Ryan by some of the major networks and newspapers and they let Mr. Ryan speak without looking into his background which would have showed his lack of honesty.” He declined to elaborate.

But Ms. Doucet received sympathy from the courts. According to Nova Scotia’s Public Prosecution Service, her trial judge accepted her evidence “without qualification” and made findings that are “palpably wrong.”

And Ms. Doucet has since continued to offer up new, startling claims. In January, after the Supreme Court of Canada make its dubious decision to stay her proceedings, explaining that she had already suffered through Mr. Ryan’s “reign of terror,” Ms. Doucet and Mr. Pink appeared on CBC radio’s The Current.

Contrary to all of the evidence she gave at her trial, to police, to court-appointed psychiatrists and to her own counsellor, Ms. Doucet began suggesting that Mr. Ryan had, on some occasions, hit her about the face with his fist.

“I would imagine then that you also tried to hide bruises,” host Anna Maria Tremonti put to Ms. Doucet, with her lawyer present.

“Yes,” Ms. Doucet replied.

“How would you do that?”

“With clothing, and makeup. Hitting me with his fist around my face was not a common thing. It was mostly holding me with his hand on my throat,” said Ms. Doucet. “It was more muscle strain than actual bruises. The bruises on my neck, I’d just wear turtlenecks.”

There was more. Mr. Ryan “had knives to my throat,” Ms. Doucet claimed, again for the first time. “He was pretending to stab me, and then he would hold a knife to my throat. And he’d laugh. It was a joke to him. But then after a few minutes, you knew it was no longer a joke. That’s what was always happening.”

Her new allegations were left unchallenged.

— with files from Jake Edmiston

National Post



bhutchinson@nationalpost.com