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OTTAWA — As many as five guards were holding down a handcuffed Jean Paul Rheaume when a sixth stepped forward, held onto his colleagues for support, and allegedly delivered three swift stomps to the prisoner’s head and torso.

“They threw me in a corner where I couldn’t move and kicked me in the head. They didn’t stop,” said Mr. Rheaume in a later interview.

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Other guards were disgusted at the beating — some even turned away — but when it came time to file official reports about the incident, the guards at Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre all adhered closely to what one of them called the “code of silence”: Mr. Rheaume had been combative, they said, and guards had merely pushed him against a wall and restrained him.

The case, described by Ontario’s ombudsman as the worst jailhouse cover-up he has investigated, is now before the courts.

The assault trial of guard John Barbro in an Ottawa courtroom allegedly lays bare the fraternity of jailers who protect each other and their own jobs, even if it means entering into a conspiracy of lies.