God said beat children, commune leader says

National Post/October 1, 2002
By Richard Foot

Charlottetown -- Lucille Poulin says she was careful not to "maim" or to "break the bones" of any children in her Prince Edward Island commune, but she readily admits to beating them with a wooden bat until their backsides were red and blue with bruises.

"I said, 'Really God, do we have to hit these little ones?' " Ms. Poulin explained yesterday, looking directly at the dozens of spectators crowded into a Charlottetown courtroom. "It's not easy -- people in court -- but it's what God said to do."

Ms. Poulin, 78, is the controversial accused figure in a bizarre trial that has captivated and outraged P.E.I. residents for two weeks. The leader of a cult-like commune on the island, she is charged with assaulting five of the nine children who moved to rural P.E.I. with the group when it relocated from Alberta in 1995.

On the witness stand yesterday for the first time, Ms. Poulin described in cold and clinical fashion how and why she disciplined the children entrusted to her care by three sets of parents.

A nine-year-old girl was hit 14 times on one occasion with the wooden bat, or "rod," for playing with the other girls when she was supposed to have cleaned the commune bathroom.

"She was being slothful, lying, and being disobedient," Ms. Poulin said, "so she got 14 [strikes] that day."

An eight-year-old boy was once struck seven times because he was afraid of telling anyone that he had wet his bed.

"That day the rod was given for dishonesty," she said.

For two weeks the court has heard conflicting testimony about the severity of life at the Four Winds Commune. Five children have said brainwashed adults forced them to work like slaves and endure daily beatings under Ms. Poulin's rule. Three adults still faithful to Ms. Poulin -- whose children were seized last summer by child welfare workers -- insist the group lived happily and productively while pursuing a simple, Christian existence.

None of the children can be named under a court order.

Ms. Poulin's inventory of punishments included beatings for disrupting lessons at home, for taking chocolate bars from the commune restaurant where they worked without pay, and for drawing pictures of defecating sheep.

"That was perversion," Ms. Poulin said, "mocking the natural functions of an animal."

She said she never hit the children in anger, despite earlier testimony she frequently flew into fits of rage. She also said the children knew why they were being beaten. Grabbing herself by her cheeks and ears, Ms. Poulin showed how she took hold of the children and threatened them with harsher discipline if they persisted in breaking her rules.

"I tell you frankly, I didn't want to give the rod," she said. "Such a sweet little thing, why hit the child? Well, God says foolishness is bound in the heart of the child and the rod will drive it away."

A registered nurse and former nun, Ms. Poulin occasionally lapsed into Biblical ramblings yesterday, raising her voice and her arms to the sky.

Mr. Justice David Jenkins warned her lawyer to get control of his client.

"My sole goal in this case is to find out whether there's been an assault," he said. "The court is not going to judge anyone's religion."

Ms. Poulin's defence rests on the notion that the Criminal Code allowed her to use reasonable corrective force to discipline what Ms. Poulin called a group of fractious and troublesome children.

Asked whether she had ever broken any Canadian laws, Ms. Poulin replied: "The laws of the land have to be obeyed. But the one I have the most difficulty obeying -- is the speed limits."

Ms. Poulin said the commune had its beginnings in 1983 when she was invited to live with a young couple, and help raise their children, at a dairy farm in Westlock, Alta.

By the time the commune abandoned Alberta, other adults had joined, but the six eldest of the farmer's 11 children had broken away from the group, or been deliberately placed by their parents in the care of child welfare officials.

Suspicious authorities in Alberta ordered the group to report to child welfare officers in P.E.I. upon arrival. Provincial officials here made four visits to the commune starting in late 1995, but were never seen again by Ms. Poulin until 2001.

"Why didn't social service workers pay more attention to what was going on in that place?" asked Nancy Cornea, a spectator, speaking outside the court. "Why did they take so many years to investigate, especially considering they were alerted about the group in 1995?"

Ms. Poulin said the commune began to fall apart in 2001, after visits from some of the children's adult siblings, who travelled to P.E.I. from Alberta. She said the siblings quietly rallied the children to return to the West, and hatched escape plans for the boys and girls.

"We were so naive about it all," she said. "I didn't know what was going on."

In July, 2001, an 11-year-old girl fled the farmhouse one night and was discovered missing in the morning. A phone call soon followed from her older sister in Alberta.

"She said, 'We have [the little girl], she's just fine. And if you charge us with kidnapping you'll really get it,' " Ms. Poulin said.

A week later, a 13-year-old boy was found secretly talking on the telephone to his brothers and sisters in Alberta. The next day, the boy was placed on a Greyhound bus in Charlottetown and told to make his way, alone, out West.

Several days after that, a nine-year-old boy went missing from the commune at night in a botched escape effort. Police were called and the boy was found. But four days later social workers arrived to seize all remaining children.

Ms. Poulin says she fears for them all, now that they have left her care.

"They all might be damned," she said. "I'm not damning them, but they're in great danger."

Ms. Poulin said the children need her help to protect themselves from evil.

"Do you speak to God directly?" her lawyer asked.

"Oh yes," she said. "I know without a shadow of a doubt if I died right now, I would be with Jesus in glory. I have passed judgment already. There will be no judgment for me."