The Man In The Sauna

On March 10th, 2020 I was contacted by an investigator with the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service Western Region office at Edmonton Garrison.

This has to do with a second member of the Canadian Armed Forces that my babysitter, P.S., provided me to for sexual purposes.

Who this man was, I don’t know.

Through paper work supplied to me by various Access to Information requests, I think I have a good idea of just who this person might be.

My grandmother had me involved with all manners of sports while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Namao. I was in hockey, I was in 5 pin bowling, I played basketball, and I was in the Red Cross swimmers program. Most of these programs were heavily subsidized to the point of not costing anything outside of the cost of uniforms or equipment.

I had been at the base pool for one of the youth swim nights. I was by myself. Now, this wasn’t a big deal back in the late ’70s, early ’80s for an eight year old kid living on a military base to be at the base swimming pool alone without adult accompaniment.

Sadly though, I can tell you from personal experience that there were perverts in the military back then.

I had just finished showering, and I was heading to my locker when P.S. came up to me and grabbed me and told me there was someone that wanted to see me in the sauna.

This would have just been a few weeks after he had been caught buggering me in his bedroom. In the time after he had been caught buggering me, he had become very physically aggressive and violent and had resorted to making all sorts of threats against me of harm that would happen if I ever told anyone about what he had done to me.

I know this encounter in the sauna occurred prior to the June 23rd, 1980 house fire on 12th street that destroyed the S. family home.

At the time, my father was still mainly living off base with his then girlfriend Susan. He was rarely home at the time. Richard and Susan didn’t move into the house on CFB Namao until August of 1980. My father relied on his mother to raise both my brother and I. My grandmother was usually drunk most of the time. And my grandmother had numerous emotional issues. So no, there was no telling grandma about what was happening.

Unlike the five times that P.S. took me for visits over to the base chapel to visit with Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae, there was no alcohol given to me prior to the sexual acts. So, I remember all of it.

I won’t go into describing the event, but suffice to say, no eight year old should be required to do what I did. And no 15 year old should be facilitating the event. And no Canadian Forces service personal should ever request these types of services from an eight year old child.

I don’t remember too much about this man. I know that he looked like a service member. Sure, he wasn’t wearing anything more than a towel in the sauna, but he had a typical neat and trim appearance. And I doubt that he just wandered onto the base and managed to find the one 15 year old boy that was willing to pimp out other children.

For the longest time, I could never put a name to this man. I honestly had no idea who he was. However, after I received certain documents from DND in 2018, I’m more than certain that I know who this man was, and why he was on the base in that period of time.

So, right now I’m just waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to be lifted. After this I will be interviewed by the CFNIS.

Do I hold out much hope for anything happening?

Not really. This is the Canadian Forces matter.

Back around 2017, I had asked Sgt. Tenaschuk of CFNIS Pacific Region if he could drive on over to Victoria and asked retired Canadian Armed Forces officer Colonel Dan Munro what exactly transpired on Canadian Forces Base Namao after his direct subordinate Captain Father Angus McRae was investigated for molesting numerous children on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980.

Sgt. Tenaschuk checked with his legal advisor, and this is what the legal advisor told him.

Now, what must be remembered is that all I asked for Sgt. Tenaschuk to do is to talk with <ret> Colonel Dan Munro. I hadn’t accused <ret> Colonel Dan Munro of anything illegal.

In 2010, retired Canadian Armed Forces officer Brigadier General Roger Bazin was arrested and charged for molesting a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in the early 1970s when Bazin was a Captain serving as the base chaplain.

In 2010 the charges were dropped just as quickly as they had been brought.

In 1986, the Court Martial Appeal Court found in the matter of Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan, that the Canadian Armed Forces have the right to consider Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery as Service Offences under the National Defence Act. As such the Canadian Armed Forces have the authority to conduct a service tribunal for these service offences, even in the modern day.

The three-year time bar that existed prior to 1998 applied to ALL service offences.

Under the National Defence Act, service members also had the right to request a courts martial to have their charges dealt with.

You see where this is going, right?

And you also hopefully understand why the Canadian Armed Forces have such a squeaky clean record when it comes to child sexual assaults prior to 1998.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the 3-year time bar matter played a significant part in the decision to drop the charges that had been brought against Bazin.

Did Bazin request that his charges be proceed with in a court martial? The National Defence Act allows for the Canadian Forces to charge retired service members with service offences. As the person was subject to the Code of Service Discipline at the time of the offence would this person be able to request a court martial instead of a civilian trial? And if so, then the 3-year time bar automatically comes into play.

Could a retired service member argue in civilian court that because they were subject to the code of service discipline at the time of the offence that they deserved to have the 3-year time bar applied in their matter?

If only the media in this country would start asking these types of questions instead of waiting for DND to bless them with an answer, we might finally see Parliament create legislation that retroactively removes the 3-year time bar from Service Offences that as Criminal Code matters would not have had any type of statute of limitations.