Child neglect – Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces

My brother.

In a recent text message, my brother Scott said that it was okay for me to use his name and his pictures.

I had no idea that these pictures existed until I visited Marie in December of 2013.

Even though Richard had very decent camera equipment for the time, there really doesn’t exist any pictures of my brother or I. Richard had tons of pictures of military aircraft, pictures of him and his buddies drinking on training exercises, and pictures of lots of other things that weren’t my brother and I.

Scott had texted me asking about the class action and we messaged back and forth for a bit.

I sent Scott a meme that I had gleaned from twitter:

That’s when he responded that Sue had given him a few pictures a while ago, but that he shredded them.

That’s when he said that I could use his name and share his pictures.

Left – Robert Gill (7 yrs) and Right – Scott Gill (4-1/2 yrs)
Picture taken in late summer of 1978
on Canadian Forces Base Namao
in PMQ #11 – 12th street

Yeah, we were about the same size as kids. Lots of people on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach and Canadian Forces Base Downsview mistook him as being the older sibling while I was mistaken for the younger sibling.

Scott Gill (rear row, 5th from the left)
Grade 1, Guthrie School
Canadian Forces Base Namao

Scott Gill
at Downsview Public School
sometime between 1984 and 1986

(l-r) Margret Mary Waniandy Anderson, Marie Annette Jacquline Dagenais Gill, Scott Dwayne Arthur Gill, Robert Wayne Gill.
About September / October 1978
While Richard was away on training exercises.

I’ve never mentioned Scott’s name for two reason.

The first reason is that I have no idea who he actually is.

The second reason is a lot of people really don’t want their names mentioned in matters like this.

When I say I don’t know who Scott is, I mean that.

The only thing that we really have in common is that we were sexually abused by the same person.

Yes, we have the same sperm donor.

Yes, we had the same egg donor.

Yes, we popped out of the same vag.

But we were raised feral.

I was born in Sept of ’71

He was born in Feb of ’74

Our mother was only around until early 1977, so he knew her about three years. I knew her for about six years.

I knew Richard’s anger and his drinking. I don’t think Scott remembers too much of that.

During our time on CFB Shearwater and CFB Summerside Richard was only around periodically, but when he was it usually wasn’t a pleasant time for anyone.

Once on CFB Shearwater, Richard was drinking and watching hockey and yelling at the TV like he always did. Scott was still in a walker and obviously bothering Richard. Richard told me to take Scott to his mother for her to look after him. Marie was downstairs doing laundry. I don’t think Richard realized this. So, I did as Richard said, I tried to take Scott to his mother. That didn’t work out too well, and down the stairs Scott went. Richard denied to Marie that he asked me to take Scott to Marie.

And that’s par for the course in Richard’s house.

Grandma came to live with us on Canadian Forces Base Summerside. Richard was rarely home.

And this is when Scott and I went full feral.

Grandma had a lot of issues from her time in Indian Residential School and from her rampant alcoholism. So she was never really around to raise my brother and I if you know what I mean. Yeah, she kept food in our bellies, and she kept darning our clothes no matter how worn out they had become, but she wasn’t their for Scott and I, so we just drifted around in our own spheres.

When you grow up in a household like that, especially a household on a military base where everyone minds their own business, you tend to go wild.

And wild we did go.

People have asked me if I am serious about the number of times that our babysitter abused my brother and I on CFB Namao. When I tell them that I am they give me an incredulous look as if I am lying. “Why didn’t you tell someone” is what they always ask. Even Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Weribicki asked this in 2011. The entire time of our stay on CFB Namao, grandma was the only constant in the house. Richard was rarely home. And the one constant about grandma is that she was usually pissed drunk.

The older kids on base used to make “chugga, chugga” sounds when grandma was around. I wouldn’t learn until later in life that “Chug” is a derogatory term for an intoxicated Indian.

So, that’s why Scott and I were the babysitter’s favourite playthings. He knew we were practically on our own and that there was no one for us to tell.

I know Scott was hoping that I could make the babysitter stop, but that was well beyond my abilities.

I think our lack of parental units on CFB Shearwater, CFB Summerside, CFB Namao, CFB Griesbach, CFB Downsview set my brother and I on a collision course with the likes of Captain McRae and his teenaged accomplice as well as the others on the other bases.

Because of Richard’s well documented issues and his refusal to accept responsibility for his family, and his need to blame others, a massive rift was created between Scott and I as kids.

Richard didn’t love either of us, and he didn’t like the either of us.

Richard’s family wasn’t like one of those families you hear of where the mother and father have issues, but they love their children and they try their best.

Richard never actually had legal custody of my brother and I. He took advantage of the National Defence Act in 1977 to have our mother thrown out of the PMQ and off the base. Marie wanted to take my brother and I back to Nova Scotia to stay with our uncle, Al Dagenais. The reason for this was due to Richard’s drinking and physical abuse getting out of hand. Richard wasn’t concerned in the least about losing Scott and I. He was terrified of having to pay child support.

Around 1986, when we were living on Canadian Forces base Downsview in Ontario, one of Richard’s air force buddies asked Richard “Rick, if these fucking kids are driving you nuts, why don’t you give them back to their fucking mother and let her deal with the stupid fuckers”. Richard’s reply was that by doing so he’d be signing his paycheque over to that bitch and that as long as Scott and I lived with him he could control the costs.

So yeah, the household that Scott and I grew up in was completely devoid of any type of loving relationship.

Everything about Richard was penny pinching for my brother and I, but extravagance for Richard and his friends and relations.

Christmas was almost non-existent for Scott and I as kids as were birthdays. Anything we did get was usually from our mother (but secretly paid for by our uncle Doug).

Socks and underwear day is how Scott referred to christmas.

So yeah, it’s no wonder my brother and I don’t really know anything about each other.

When we lived on CFB Downsview in Toronto, my brother and I ran with totally different crowds.

I got further sexually abused and I got introduced to child prostitution. I know that I came damn close to being on a child pornography tape.

I don’t know if any of the men who took advantage of me while I lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview got their hands on Scott, but I do know that Scott was familiar with one of these guys.

I’m almost 100% certain that Scott never turned tricks like I did, but I have no doubt that he got sexually abused as well.

I moved out of the house in late 1987 just after I had turned 16.

I never saw Scott again until the spring of 1990 when I was home on a layover on a six month contract job. My father took me up to Uxbridge, Ontario to see him.

I moved to Edmonton with my father in June of 1990 after my six month contract had ended. Richard said that “we could try to be a family again”. Scott didn’t move with us due to his obligations in Ontario at the time.

I lived on Canadian Forces Base Greisbach for about 1-1/2 months before my father bought a house in Morninville, AB.

The thing about “being a family again” didn’t work and I had my own apartment by October of 1990. I can’t remember when my brother finally arrived in Edmonton, but it was after I had my apartment.

Just as things didn’t work out between Sue and I in “her” new house in Morinville, things didn’t work out between Sue and Scott in Sue’s new house.

I guess that my brother and I were too uncouth to be in “her” house.

It’s probably a good thing that she got her kid off the bases before he got too old.

Scott ended up at my apartment with Richard stating that “I owed it to him (Richard)” after all he did to raise my brother and I without the help of that “silly bitch of a mother” of ours.

Richard absolutely refused to help with groceries or anything else, so Scott ended up going out to our mother’s acreage.

I left Edmonton in February of 1992. The economy sucked, I was unemployed and on welfare. I moved to Vancouver, BC.

I forget the actual sequence of events, but one day on the way to work Scott and his girlfriend were riding the Skytrain.

I think this was when Scott was attending “Columbia Academy of Arts” to be a mixing technician for music recording.

I’m thinking that this was around 1996ish. We didn’t stay in contact for more than a month or two.

Around 1998ish, Richard called me up at my place of employment and told me that Scott needed help to fix his car and because I owed Richard for all that he had provided to us when we were kids this was expected. Again, Scott and I didn’t stay in contact.

I know that Scott and his girlfriend celebrated New Year’s eve 2000 in Vancouver.

The next time I saw Scott was in 2003 when I went to Edmonton with my then girlfriend to see Richard. Richard had no time. I spent more time hanging out with my stepmother than I did with Richard.

That was the last time that I’d ever see Richard alive.

I saw Scott maybe once or twice during the week my girlfriend and I were in Edmonton.

I never did see Scott again until the summer of 2013. I had to contact Scott due to a Federal Court matter I had going on in which I had read his statement to the CFNIS in 2011 and I had some questions to ask him about his statement and the notes that were taken by the investigating officers. I also wanted to share with him the contents of our previously unknown Alberta Social Service Records and our Children’s Aid Society of Toronto records and my foster care records.

We hung out over the course of a week. That was something that I never thought would have been possible before. But after having read the social service records I realized that Scott and I turned out the best we could considering the defective household that we grew up in.

The highlight of the visit was Scott and I stopped for coffee and donuts at a coffee shop in the east side of Edmonton. Anyways, we’re sitting there and this elderly gent comes up to the two of us and asks us if we could please stop swearing as it’s too much for him and his wife.

Yeah, that’s one thing Scott and I did pick up from Richard and his mother. I’m not sure who swore worse, grandma or Richard. Grandma could unleash her profanities and put Richard to shame.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you want something to fucking cry about? I’ll give you something to fucking cry about. You fucking little asshole. You goddamn silly fucker. You little fucking cocksucker. That was from both grandma and Richard. Richard wasn’t afraid to let go with “you stupid cunt”, “you’re a fucking stunned cunt” and other choice words directed to his mother and other women around him.

In the fall of 2013 things fell apart between Scott and I, no doubt due to my brother’s recent re-aquaintence with my father.

My father had contacted my brother via our stepmother as Richard wanted to know about the Written Examination for Federal Court that I had subpoenaed Richard with. I guess Richard never thought that I would have seen the statement he gave to the military police in 2011 in which he denied that my brother and I had ever been sexually abused on CFB Namao, and in which he totally erased our grandmother from our past. I also don’t think that Richard thought that I would ever get my foster care records or my social service records.

But nonetheless Richard had to cover his ass.

I don’t blame my brother. I’ve known for a long time that Richard was a skilled and masterful manipulator. I’ll readily admit to being manipulated by Richard. Richard could manipulate anyone. I have no doubt that his manipulation skills were the only thing that allowed him to enjoy a 30 year career in the Canadian Armed Forces.

My brother and I didn’t really speak again until 2019. Since then we’ve had sporadic conversations. Nothing too in depth or extensive, and I honestly don’t think things will ever get better. That’s the way Richard raised us, and that’s what Richard wanted.

Scott and I were two strangers living in the same household.

I don’t think that Scott ever realized as a kid that our family was in as much trouble as it was, I know I sure as hell didn’t have the foggiest idea until I got my social service paperwork in 2011.

No doubt Richard had lied to Scott over the years and convinced Scott that nothing had happened on CFB Namao.

I don’t think Scott honestly believed anything of what I had to say about CFB Namao until the Canadian Armed Forces finally released the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 Courts Martial transcripts in November of 2020 which indicated that the military police in 1980 were very well aware of what the babysitter and Captain McRae had been doing to young children on the base.

It also helps that I have my class action going on at the moment because if I was Scott I wouldn’t believe a single fucking thing that came out of my mouth.

Do I blame Scott?

No.

How could I?

I know the household that Scott grew up in.

Fuck, I wouldn’t believe anything that came out of my mouth if I was him either.

As kids, when things went wrong in the house Richard would simply blame either Scott or I for what went wrong.

It was like he was doing everything to keep us at each other’s throat.

Gabor Maté observed that “no two children have the same parents” meaning that parents treat each child differently no matter how much they try to treat each child the same. Richard took that observation to the extreme. Not only did Scott and I not have the same father, but the father we had changed on an almost daily basis.

One day I was Richard’s little buddy, and the next day Scott was Richard’s little buddy.

Richard wouldn’t give the slightest fuck about Scott watching cartoons, but if I watched cartoons I’d get berated for watching that fucking horseshit. What the fuck is wrong with you, that shit is for little kids, why the fuck are you watching this?

So of course there would be animosity and resentment between the two of us.

Scott would break something, and I’d get blasted for not watching Scott and keeping him from breaking the thing. So of course I resented Scott. It’s what I was taught.

And I sure wasn’t in any position to raise or care for my brother no matter how much my father insisted that raising my brother was my responsibility.

I was diagnosed at age five as having anorexia due to “societal issues” in the house. At age nine, after having been sexually abused for 1-1/2 years I was found to be severely emotionally disturbed and suffering from major depression, severe anxiety, and haphephobia.

I was in no position to “raise” my brother or to take over as my brother’s father.

So yeah, there really isn’t much of any connection between Scott and I.

Hopefully whatever settlement we get from the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces is enough to help him out because that’s all that I can really do.

There will be no magical time machines to jump into and to go back in time and redo our lives.

I don’t connect easily with people.

I have no emotions to offer.

And I’m undergoing M.A.i.D. sometime in 2024.

Our father never taught us how to love or how to be loved.

Richard taught us how to hate, and how to despise, how to show contempt, and how to be isolated.

It’s no big secret.

(( I will preface this post by stating that I am not speaking in an official capacity for my employer, Providence Health Care)))

If you’ve paid attention to the news over the last little while you’ll be familiar with the fact that St. Paul’s Hospital does not offer Medical Assistance in Dying on the premisses due to the fact that Providence Health Care is a Christian faith based organization.

Bobbie, you’re an atheist, how can you work there?

The same way all the other employees that follow different religions and faiths do.

Due to media attention that was generated over the transfer of end-of-life patients to other non-Catholic facilities to obtain their M.A.i.D. procedure, the Ministry of Health was being called upon to take action.

And action they did, they sat down with Providence and came to an agreement.

M.A.i.D. will still not be provided at St. Paul’s Hospital.

However, M.A.i.D. will be provided in a brand new facility being built directly adjacent to the hospital.

So far what I know is that the new building will not physically touch the Providence buildings, but will be close enough that a small walkway will connect the new facility to the Providence 2 building.

The new building will belong to and will be operated by Vancouver Coastal Health.

Patients at St. Paul’s who are requesting medical assistance in dying will be “transferred” from the care of St. Paul’s to the care of the VCH M.A.i.D. program.

I know more or less the exact location of this new building.

I know that it is supposed to be in full operation by the summer of 2024.

The oddly interesting thing about where this facility is going is that it is being connected to the Providence II building where the Providence IV building was supposed to connect. Due to the government in the ’80s and ’90s failing to provide the required funding, only half of the modern St. Paul’s Providence buildings were built.

Providence 1 was built, the funding fell through for Providence 2 so Providence 2 was built in two stages. Parking levels P2 to 1st floor. 2nd floor to 10th floor came a year or two later. However Providence 3 and Providence 4 were never built.

Will I obtain my M.A.i.D. procedure there?

Nope.

First, I believe that the M.A.i.D. facility will only be available for patients on site.

Second, this would terrorize my co-workers.

I once joked with the chief pathologist on site that I wanted my autopsy done on site……. the replied “Don’t even joke about that. I wouldn’t let my staff do an autopsy on someone they knew”.

With the exception of one electrician, no one at work knows what I’ve gone through and no one except for that same electrician knows that I wish to avail myself to M.A.i.D.

As I’ve said, I have two options.

One option is to arrange to donate my organs, in which case my procedure will occur in a hospital like Vancouver General where my corpse can be taken to an operating room immediately after my death so that my organs can be harvested.

The other option that I have, and this is the one that I am favouring, is to have my M.A.i.D. procedure take place in a funeral home.

This would be the easiest for me to set up. A one stop shop if you will.

Put to sleep

Store my corpse for the required 48 hours.

Cremate my corpse.

As of today it is 14 weeks and 5 days until I see my doctor to make my formal application for M.A.i.D.

I don’t seem my two assessments as being completed before anytime before June or July of 2024.

After that comes the 90 day cooling down period.

Then comes the prescription.

The prescription for M.A.i.D. is apparently valid for 1 year.

I don’t think I’d want to linger for the full year.

I’ll definitely want to take some time off work, not too long, maybe about 6 months.

And then I’d like to undergo my procedure.

In the meantime the new M.A.i.D. facility will be in operation.

Photography.

I took this past Friday off from work to be photographed by a professional photographer.

I met Albert back in 2017 when he came to the hospital to document an energy savings program that phsycial plant had implemented.

He was brought in by the planner that had looked after the project.

He didn’t say anything to me at the time, but he asked the manager to contact me and to tell me that he was interested in taking some photos of me in his studio.

I went over and we did a photoshoot for a few hours.

It was interesting.

So, I decided that I’d like to have some more photographs taken seeing as how my wardrobe has become far more than second hand dresses. Also, my tattoos cover far more than what they did back in 2017.

I contacted Albert about a month ago and we set up an appointment on Friday.

I took four dresses over in addition to the dress that I was wearing.

I also took my favourtie heels.

Rode the scooter from Braid skytrain station over to Albert’s place.

Albert should start a therapy / photography service.

We talked for about 30 to 40 minutes before going into the studio. He seemed to want to flesh out why I wanted to pay to get my photographs taken.

I explained to Albert that I have a decent camera setup, and I like taking photographs of mechanical things, and odd things. I don’t like to photograph people and I don’t like people in my photographs.

I also explained that I am far too self concious and far too critical to take pictures of myself.

Albert asked me what happens when people want to take picture of me.

I told him that for some reason my brain reacts different.

For example, when I was in Iceland over the summer no matter where I went, both tourists and Icelanders were asking to take my picture.

I think the reason that I love dresses and colours and designs is they offset how absolutely dead I am on the inside.

Let’s face it, with what I’ve been through in life, I have the ultimate “resting bitch face”. People think that I’m angry. I’m not. I’m just completely dead on the inside.

As social services indicated back in 1982, I couldn’t express emotions, I couldn’t express happiness or sadness. Whenever they tried to get me to express my emotions it would usually end up in a temper tantrum. I had no idea of how to make friends. I was completely isolated. Captain Totzke and my father had no interest in getting me the help I needed at the time, so things were just left to fester.

I should have the photographs in a week’s time. Albert has to process the images. I’ll get them in RAW format, but he’ll also render JPG versions of the photos. Most of the portrait full frame shots were taken with a Medium Format digital camera.

Other people.

One thing that I have realized is that people living in our society really don’t have as much control over their lives as people believe that they do.

For some reason people have more control over the lives of others that they do over their own.

I don’t remember being asked if I’d like to be born.

My parents were horny, they fucked, he ejaculated and didn’t pull out, and nine months later I popped out.

Did I ask to be born to two parents that were already suffering mental illnesses? My father battling depression and alcoholism, my mother suffering from anxiety.

Did I ask to be born to an alcoholic father?

Did I ask to be raised by a residential school survivor who had her own severe mental health issues?

And puhlease, don’t tell me that I should be happy that I was blessed with the miracle of life.

There’s over 7.8 billion people on the face of the planet.

Pregnancy, birth, and life are not a “miracle”.

And if your argument is that I should be happy that I don’t live in an underdeveloped country, well fuck you. I live in this country. I was raised in this country. I was abused by fellow citizens of this country. I was fucked over by institutions of this country. You don’t get to negate the shit I live through by erecting fanciful strawmen and bad faith fallacies.

Contrary to the teachings of Captain Terry Totzke and master corporal Richard Gill, I didn’t deserve the sexual abuse from Captain McRae and his teenage accomplice, P.S.

And contrary to the opinions of Captain Terry Totzke and my father, I didn’t deserve 2-1/2 years of conversion therapy.

I was a concious decision of Captain Totzke to deny my of the treatments I required for my mental health issues.

Sure, Totzke may have only been following the orders of his superiors. But he still made a decision. I had no say in the matter.

My father went along with the decision to deny me my treatment. Yeah, sure, Totzke outranked my father, but my father still had choices at his disposal. He made a choice to play along.

When my father had his meltdown in the PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario, somebody within the military police made the decision to not notify the Metropolitan Toronto Police Service thereby ensuring that Richard’s inability to control his anger wouldn’t be reported to the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto.

Somebody in the Canadian Forces chain of command made the conciousous decision to run a “dog & pony show” investigation in 2011. Somebody made this decision even though they knew full well that due to limited resources, only victims of crimes have access to mental heatlh treatments.

Somebody in the Canadian Forces chain of command made the conciousous decision to hide the information contained in the CFSIU DS 120-10-80 investigation paperwork from the Alberta Crown prosecutor in 2011 thereby forcing the Alberta Crown to make a horrific decision.

Somebody in the Canadian Forces chain of command decided to hide the existence of CFSIU DS 120-10-80 from the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2012 thereby ensuring that the MPCC wouldn’t discover until 2020 that the CFNIS in 2011 knew all about the criminal exploits of P.S..

Somebody in the Office of the Judge Advocate General made the decision to not allow the CFNIS to talk to former base commander Daniel Edward Munro in 2017 due to the inability to lay charges against Munro due to the 3-year-time-bar that existed only in the military prior to 1998.

So, as you can see, a lot of people made decisions for me or they made decisions that directly affected me.

Hopefully I get to make the one decision that I should be allowed to make, and that is to end my life through Medical Assistance in Dying.

Tuesday October 24th, 2024

Well, this doesn’t bode well for me.

Dying with Dignity Canada had a webinar earlier today that I had submitted some questions to.

Two of my questions were asked to the guests, but they were editied in such a way as to remove most of the meat from the question.

Regardless, I didn’t get the answer that I was looking for.

The sense that I get is that Dying with Dignity is trying to stay very far, far away from the topic of Medical Assistance in Dying for Mental Illness.

And what the two providers had to say wasn’t promising at all.

Basically, I’m functional. I can function on a daily basis. So therefore I will probably be unable to obtain medical assistance in dying.

In basic terms, I’m a fucking industrial robot. As long as I can perform the tasks required of me I’m A.O.K.!

Get to work Bobbie…. you have work to do.

Even if I was “non-functional” I would have had to undergo years and years of counselling and therapy in order to obtain M.A.i.D. for mental illness.

Now, you might be wondering, just like the M.A.i.D. assessors will probably be wondering……. “Bobbie, why didn’t you obtain treatment for your mental illnesses?????”

Well, remember, even though I was diagnosed at age 9 with major depression, severe anxiety, an intense fear of being touched, a fear of men, etc., my social worker at the time, Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke actively and intentionally prevented me from obtaining mental health treatment as it was a risk for the Canadian Armed Forces.

The Canadian Forces conspired to do everything possible to keep the story of Captain Father Angus McRae out of the media. The military even moved the entire courts martial “in-camera” citing the need to “protect the morals of Canadians”.

The last thing that Captain Totzke was going to allow was for me to obtain treatment for me mental health issues. That would involve me going for counselling, or therapy, maybe even time in a psychiatric facility for children.

The risk this posed is that I would open my mouth and start talking. And back then there was still enough interest in the media over the Captain McRae courts martial that the media would have torn into the Canadian Armed Forces.

So, instead I recevied “conversion therapy” at the hands of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke.

For 2-1/2 years I was labelled as a mentally ill homosexual by Captain Terry Totzke.

For 2-1/2 years I was blamed by Captain Totzke for what had happened to me on CFB Namao. I was blamed for what happened to my brother on CFB Namao. I wasn’t allowed to play sports.

Home life at the time and thereafter was a fucking nightmare for two reasons.

First was that my father was a lowly master corporal at the time. Captains greatly outrank master corporals. If a captain says that your son is a pole smoking homo, then your son is a pole smoking homo.

Second was that at the time the Canadian Armed Forces was an extremely homophobic environment. No service member wanted it known that they had a homosexual living in their PMQ.

Even after Alberta Social Services became involved with my family, Captain Totzke interfered with the attempts of Alberta Social Services to remove me from the home and appears to have been instrumental in assisting my father flee the jurisdiction of Alberta for Ontario.

And even though Captain Totzke had declared that I was a mentally ill homosexual, I was still dealing with major depression, severe anxiety, and a plethora of other issues on my own.

My father had his own helpful therapies to help me with these issues. One therapy involved backhands across the face. One therapy involved bare ass spankings with a leather belt. Another therapy was the “get the fuck up to your room and you’re not having supper” therapy. And of course there was the all time favourite “yelling and screaming like a drill instructor” therapy.

So, from my diagnoses in in October of 1980 until the discovery of my social service records in August of 2011 I was left to my own devices dealing with the wars and the shit and the terrors and the memories in my brain.

And as I learnt in 2011, dealing with this shit 30 years after the fact doesn’t do anything.

I did counselling with counsellors from Practitioner Renewal and even the Employee and Family Assistance Program.

I tried therapy with the BC Society for Survivors of Male Sexual Abuse.

I even went to meetings with the local chapter of SNAP.

None of this works.

Absolutely none.

Trying to explain what I’ve been through is a fucking nightmare. Civilians have no fucking idea of what life was like on the bases, especially for sexually abused children.

The fact that it is legally impossible to bring charges against persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline for Service Offences committed prior to 1998 means that absolutely no one has heard of child sexual abuse on the bases.

The fact that the Canadian Forces can be so very secretive with the information that they have means that the truth never gets out.

So when people like me try to get help, we’re literally laughed at.

And then there’s the fact that I don’t have a crack habit, or a heroin habit, or a drinking habit……..

YOU’RE NOT AN ADDICT!!!

YOU DIDN’T SUFFER!!!!

ONLY ADDICTS SUFFER YOU FUCKING WHINY ASSHOLE!!!!

We spend so much on addicts that there is sweet fuck all left over for those suffering from mental illnesses who aren’t addicts.

Chemical therapy and self blame is all that is offered these days.

Back around 1985 the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto said that due to staffing levels, budgetary constraints, and my father’s refusal to participate with the case workers that the CAST wouldn’t be able to get involved with my family unless there were credible reports of abuse from the community. We lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview at the time. There never would be “credible reports from the community”. Military members don’t rat out other members and the military washes its own laundry. This secrecy is how John Ryan Turner was starved to death and beat to death in his father’s PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in 1994 and no one heard a thing.

And now it looks as if Medical Assistance in Dying is going to be beyond my grasp.

There are no therapies to fix my brain or to erase my memories.

I’m not going to subject myself to psychiatrists and psychologists blaming me for my problems.

I don’t want elctrocunvulsive therapy.

And don’t even mention to me sham “therapies” like CBT and mindfulness and other “we don’t really know how to fix the human brain so we’re going to set you up so that we can blame you for not trying”

My practitioner has said that he’s more than willing to help me with my application in March, but after watching the Dying with Dignity webinar today I don’t think that my application will go anywhere.

I guess I’m going to have to start getting serious about “alternative methods”.

I don’t remember asking my parents to fuck in December of 1970.

I don’t remember being asked if I’d like to be born.

I don’t really remember being asked if I’d like an alcoholic residential school survivor as a primary care giver.

I don’t really remember being asked if I’d like a rage prone alcohol fueled piss-tank for a father.

I don’t remember being asked by the babysitter if I’d like to have his penis in my mouth, or in my ass, or to have any of the other sexual acts that the did to me done to me.

I don’t remember being asked by Captain McRae if I would like to get intoxicated off a glass of wine so that he could do whatever he did while I was blacked out.

I don’t really remember being asked if I’d like to have conversion therapy from a military social worker.

But what I don’t want is to go on living with the remnants of untreated depression, untreated anxiety, and all of the other issues gifted to me by the events back then.

I do want to die.

I don’t want to be here any longer.

I am fucking tired.

I am fucking burnt out.

With all of the fucking horseshit that I’ve been through I’d like to be able to go out on my own with some form of dignity.

Dignity that I’ve never had in my entire life.

Surely going by M.A.i.D. or going by suicide will be the same thing, right?

Nope.

Suicide is painful.

Suicide is cruel.

Suicide is not always successful.

Suicide gives the Canadian Armed Forces what they want.

If I am forced to go by suicide then the CAF can point to me and tell everyone that will listen that I was just some “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military” and that I was just a fucking crazy nutbar.

If I am allowed to have Medical Assistance in Dying, I get to die without pain, I get to die with dignity. And the Canadian Armed Forces wouldn’t dare say fuck all.