As I was reading through the August 13th, 2019 newspaper story from the Ottawa Citizen detailing the investigation that lead to the prosecution of Donald Joseph Sullivan for sexually abusing numerous children in the 1970s I couldn’t help but think back to a comment that was made by Alberta Crown Prosecutor Jon Werbicki when he declined to allow charges to be brought against an already multi-time convicted child molester.
The person that I made allegations against in March of 2011 wasn’t someone without any form of criminal record. P.S. had been arrested, prosecuted and convicted in Manitoba in 1984 for molesting an 8 year old boy. P.S. was then arrested and charged in the spring of 1985 for molesting a 9 year old boy on Canadian Forces Base Namao. P.S. was arrested and charged a short while later for molesting a 13 year old newspaper boy in Edmonton, AB. P.S. was convicted in August of 1985 for the crimes committed against both the 9 year old and the 13 year old.
P.S. had numerous convictions from 1985 until 2000 for various crimes including sexual assaults. His records are easily available though CPIC
As I said, it wasn’t like I made allegations against some random rube off the street.
Alberta Crown Prosecutor Jon Werbicki actually said in his Crown Legal Review that he had submitted back to Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock on Tuesday November 1st @ 13:43 “The fact that no complaint was made to any party or a person in authority after <P.S.> moved away is very significant”.
As I’ve stated elsewhere, my father at the time practically lived in a bottle of rum. A psychologist hired by Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke in October of 1980 to evaluate my family found that I was terrified of my father. This same psychologist also found that my father accepted no responsibility for his family; blamed others, including his own mother, for problems with the family; expected others to solve his problems for him.
My grandmother, who lived with us until the summer of 1981, wasn’t much better. She drank. A lot. She also had a temper that rivaled my father’s.
My stepmother blamed my grandmother’s drinking for enabling my father’s drinking.
This may be true to a point as my father started to dry out after his mother left our house.
However I don’t believe my grandmother’s drinking caused my father’s drinking. They both drank for very different reasons.
All of the issues with my family were laid out very succinctly in my foster care records which were given to the CFNIS in August of 2011, but which the CFNIS declined to include in their investigation. My foster care records did not offer any support to the narrative that the CFNIS were running with during this investigation, so they dropped it. However, the Alberta Crown was made aware of these reports, and still chose to stand by Werbicki’s determination that it was very significant that I didn’t tell anyone back then about the abuse.
When I made my complaint against Earl Ray Stevens, not once did the Ontario Crown chastize me for not having told anyone back when the assaults were happening. The Ontario Crown seems to realize that sexually abused children often keep their mouths shut.
The one thing the Ontario crown was concerned about was the possibility of Earl Ray Steven’s defence raising the issue of consent. When I was being abused by Earl, I was over the age of consent.
Donald Joseph Sullivan, in his position as a Scout Leader, abused numerous children during the 1970s. According to the Ottawa Citizen, he somehow escaped prosecution as an adult during the 1970s for the crimes he committed as a Scout Leader.
According to the Ottawa Citizen, in June of 2018 the Ottawa Police launched an investigation into Donald Joseph Sullivan for crimes that he had committed during the 1970s.
At no time did the Ontario Crown chastise the victims for not telling a “party or a person” of the abuse after Sullivan left Ontario and joined the Canadian Armed Forces where he’d end up molesting more children.
And one other interesting thing. The Ottawa Police went looking for more victims.
During my March 31st 2011 interview with CFNIS investigator Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock, I told Mr. Hancock that in addition to my brother and I, that I was aware of 4 other children that P.S. had molested. The CFNIS in 2011 deemed that it wasn’t relevant to look for more victims. I would learn in 2018 that even though other victims had come forward, such as P.G., the CFNIS brass decided that the existence of other victims would not be disclosed to the Crown as these other victims didn’t directly witness my abuse.
It’s almost as if the CFNIS are doing everything in their power to control the decision of the Crown.
Now, it must be pointed out that my father did in fact know about P.S..
Anytime anything went wrong in our house, I was blamed by my father for what I had allowed the babysitter to do.
Captain Terry Totzke, the Canadian Forces military social worker that I was placed in the care of as a result of the “homosexual tendencies” I exhibited by having sexual relations with P.S. on CFB Namao obviously knew about the abuse.
Should I cut Jon Werbicki some slack?
The simple answer is no, and I don’t really care how upset his boss Orest Yereniuk becomes.
It’s common knowledge that the Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service have a less than stellar record when it comes to serious criminal investigations. The Fynes Public Interest Hearing and the Final Report of the External Review Authority speak to this. For the Alberta Crown to feign ignorance about the incompetence of the CFNIS beggars belief.
Even former Minister of National Defence and current Alberta premier decried the “incompetence” of the military police. And this was for an CFNIS investigation which shared numerous investigators and senior officers with the investigation into my complaints against P.S..
The incompetence of the Canadian Forces Military Police was well documented during the Somalia Inquiry.
Basically, the CFNIS would have trouble investigating their way out of a wide open field.
If I was a provincial Crown Prosecutor, I’d want anything brought to me by the CFMPG, the CFMP, or the CFNIS to be vetted and double checked by an outside civilian police agency.
And the way I look at it, if the Crown of any province is willing to put blind faith into any police agency no matter how questionable the record of the police agency is then the Crown deserves to wear its horrific and hurtful decisions.
Is there anything else that would cause the Alberta Crown to decline to press charges?
Mr. P.S. lives in Fort Erie, Ontario. I live in the lower mainland of British Columbia, the crimes occurred on a military base in Alberta. Guess who’s picking up the costs for this?
On top of this, P.S. would have to be prosecuted under the Juvenile Delinquents Act. Which means that he’d get bugger all for a sentence, but at least all of the victims of P.S. would be eligible to claim for damages.
And also, there’s the fact Alberta’s legendary tightness of the purse-strings created a court system that was so under funded for so long that a case like mine would have lingered at the bottom of the priority list.
And then of course, the recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling that says that a trial must occur within 18 months for a provincial court trial and 30 months for a more serious case heard in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench means that the Alberta Crown would be even less inclined to prosecute an older case like mine, often citing irrelevant b.s. as an excuse as opposed to just coming right out and saying that the cost isn’t worth it.
And what this creates is a warped justice system where people who were sexually abused as children in Ontario can receive justice, and people who were sexually abused as children in Alberta get told to not worry their pretty little heads.
Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces 