Challenging lawsuit, prison officials deny conspiring with Ford on jail beating
ANN HUI
The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Mar. 24 2014, 6:32 PM EDT
Last updated Monday, Mar. 24 2014, 6:34 PM EDT
...Scott MacIntyre, the former common-law spouse of Mr. Ford’s sister Kathy, filed a $1.5-million lawsuit against the mayor and the province in January. That lawsuit alleges that Mr. Ford conspired with a former football player as well as prison staff to have Mr. MacIntyre beaten during his stay at the Toronto West Detention Centre
But in a statement of defence filed Monday, the province “specifically denies that any of its employees conspired to intentionally facilitate the attack as alleged,” and claims Mr. MacIntyre misled prison staff and refused to cooperate after the incident.
Mr. MacIntyre told The Globe in an earlier interview that he had his teeth shattered and leg broken in the attack. He alleged it had been organized by Mr. Ford and executed by former Don Bosco football player Aedan Petros to “keep my mouth shut” about the mayor’s alleged drug use.
But the province says that after Mr. MacIntyre was found by prison staff lying on the floor fully-clothed outside a washroom, “the plaintiff told the physician that he slipped and fell in the shower and hurt his knee.” The statement says that Mr. MacIntyre was asked several times by both prison staff and a doctor about the attack, and each time, he “repeated his story that he had slipped in the shower.”
Four days after, the statement reads, Mr. MacIntyre gave prison staff a different account of the incident, saying that he and another inmate had an argument because the other inmate “insisted that he get the newspaper before the plaintiff’s friend” and the two
“decided to go to the washroom to settle the dispute.”
When pressed for the name of the other inmate, Mr. MacIntyre alleged refused, saying he wasn’t
“a rat.”
The statement also addresses a claim by Mr. MacIntyre that prison staff were either negligent or complicit because video surveillance was “inexplicably disabled” before the attack. But the province says that the area was regularly patrolled and under video surveillance (only the recording function had been decommissioned, and at least a year before the attack)....
What does it mean to go to the washroom to settle a dispute?
