FOG BLOG SAINT JOHN LOG: ESTABROOKS CIVIL LAW SUIT IS UNDERWAY, VICTIMS GIVE THEIR TESTIMONY!

Photo is of Victim......... describes effect of abuse by police officer as lawsuit against Saint John begins

Class-action plaintiff Bobby Hayes says the late Kenneth Estabrooks preyed on kids for 30 years Bobby Hayes, the representative plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the City of Saint John, testified Monday that former police officer Kenneth Estabrooks ruined his life.

Hayes, 62, said he was 10 or 11 years old when Estabrooks first ordered him into his police car, then drove him to Tin Can Beach and sexually assaulted him in the front seat of his police vehicle.

Hayes became emotional describing the assault and how ashamed he felt afterward.

He said Estabrooks had threatened to kill his mother and father with his police gun, if Hayes dared to tell anyone about the incident. Estabrooks assaulted him as many as 10 times over the next few years. The assaults stopped when Hayes was about 13 years old and was bigger and fast enough to get away, he said.

Hayes said he was never the same. He had difficulty concentrating in school and there was such a drastic change in his behaviour, his mother took him to a therapist.

"I couldn't study. I couldn't finish anything," said Hayes, who told the court he only got to Grade 8.

"And I hated and despised policemen."

Hayes began giving testimony after opening arguments from lawyer Celeste Poltak.

She argued that Estabrooks, at all material times, was an employee of the city.

She said it was the city that negotiated contracts with the police union and determined wages, paid wages and medical benefits, and overtime pay. She said the city also determined hours of duty, class of job positions, handled grievances and provided equipment, vehicles and uniforms.

She said Estabrooks used his power of authority as a police officer to prey upon and intimidate children. He assaulted youth while wearing a police uniform and driving a police car, she said.

"He had a police badge and a police gun," she said.

She said the city also failed in its duty to protect the public when city staff failed to ask questions about why a sergeant, after two decades of service in the police department, was transferred to the city works department in 1975.