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Moreover, court heard, Crown witnesses — all guards — testified that the internal investigators used leading questions, answers and all.

“This is a case full of lies, deceit and perjury. It’s very disturbing,” Edelson said in an interview after his client was acquitted.

The judge-alone trial heard that some guards pinned the assault on Barbro after the jail’s rumour mill had it that he was to blame.

Robertson wrote a bogus occurrence report about the alleged beating because he didn’t want to cross the code among inmates. He testified that he was shocked when he saw a fellow guard stomp the head of prisoner pinned to the concrete floor by some of the jail’s biggest guards.

Robertson said it left him angry. Still, he filed a short-on-details occurrence report because he said he didn’t want to turn on a fellow guard.

In his own words on the stand, Robertson said he didn’t know what to write in his report, for which he was suspended three days.

“We all know what happens to whistleblowers in any industry, let alone a place where the trust of fellow officers is all you got,” Robertson said.

Robertson later identified Barbro as the attacker but once on the stand and under oath, he said he never actually saw the accused stomp Rhéaume, who was serving only 30 days for a break-and-enter.

Beauchamp, at six-foot-two and 330 pounds one of the biggest guards at the jail, testified that he was ashamed for wrongly implicating Barbro.

Beauchamp was reduced to tears during the internal investigation and testified that he simply went along with investigators who were trying to pin the stomping on Barbro and wrongly implicated the accused even though he never saw any stomping.

He, like other guards, told investigators what they wanted to hear to save his job and begged internal investigators not to fire him, he said.

Barbro would not comment. His lawyer, who sometimes sat next to him during the trial, is exploring all legal remedies. ‎‎

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

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