About 50 people shouted and waved placards outside the Cornwall Public Inquiry Thursday to protest the treatment of a man who refused to testify before the commission and demand his release from jail.

Perry Dunlop, a former Cornwall police officer, is in Toronto serving a six-month sentence for a civil conviction of contempt of court. He is to be sentenced next Wednesday for a criminal conviction of contempt of court.

The inquiry is looking into how authorities responded to allegations that young people were abused in Cornwall by more than a dozen men from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Dunlop's role began when he learned in 1993 that the local Catholic diocese had paid a former altar boy $32,000 to drop his sexual abuse complaint against two priests. He handed the complaint to the Children's Aid Society against orders from his superiors, leading to an OPP investigation.

Dunlop was charged and found guilty of contempt of court in the fall of 2007 after he was summoned by the inquiry from his home in B.C. as witness but refused to testify. He said he believed the inquiry is not about finding the truth and he had lost faith in a justice system that treated him as a bad guy.

'We thought he was an important witness'

Peter Engelmann, lead counsel for the inquiry, acknowledged that Dunlop's supporters are concerned and upset, but stood by the commission's decision to take the hard line in their efforts to get Dunlop to testify.

"We took the position we did some time ago because we thought he was an important witness," Engelmann said. "He's always been able, of course, to come here and testify and get out of jail by doing that."

There were also fears that other witnesses would similarly refuse to testify if there were no consequences.

Inside the courtroom on Thursday, testimony continued from former bishop Eugene Larocque, who as head of the diocese approved the payment to the altar boy.

Larocque also admitted he knew of the abuse allegations against his priests and even lobbied to have a priest, who had been convicted of sodomizing two teenagers, brought into his diocese at the request of another priest.

During questioning on Thursday, Laroque agreed that the response of the diocese to the sexual-abuse allegations against young people "could have been better."

He is to spend one more day on the stand.