Archdiocese – Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces

Hello Media……..

Below is a copy of a letter that I just sent off to a member of the Canadian media after having read their story about the growing calls for the Catholic church and the various Archdiocese in Canada to release the names of the Catholic clergy that the church knew or suspected of having molested children in the various Archdiocese across Canada.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that there were more members of the catholic clergy on base abusing their rank and going after the children of junior rank and NCOs knowing full well that their word as a captain carried far more weight than the word of a private or a corporal.

Hello Media,

Do the names Angus McRae, Roger Bazin, or Donald Joseph Sullivan ring a bell?
No?
I don’t blame you for not knowing them.

McRae and Bazin were both officers in the Canadian Armed Forces. Captain Angus McRae and Brigadier General Roger Bazin to be exact.
Sullivan was a corporal.

There connection is that they were all involved with the Catholic Clergy on the bases.

Captain McRae was investigated for “acts of homosexuality” in 1973 while he was at the Royal Military College in Kingston. RMC Kingston is attached to CFB Kingston. Captain McRae ended up at CFS Holberg where apparently he had an interaction with a teenage boy on Canadian Forces Station Holberg on Vancouver Island. In May of 1980, Captain McRae was investigated by the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit on the suspicion of having molested over 25 children who were living in military housing on Canadian Forces Base Namao. Due to certain flaws that existed in the National Defence Act prior to December 1998, the number of charges brought against Captain McRae were severely reduced and he was dealt with by courts martial instead of facing a civilian judge. Major Roger Bazin was flown out from Ottawa to assist Captain McRae with his personal matters.
In February 2010, retired Canadian Armed Forces officer Brigadier General Roger Bazin was arrested and charged with having sexually abused a young boy who was living on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974. Brigadier General Roger Bazin was a captain in 1974.

Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan was given a courts martial for committing acts of gross indecency with numerous boys on CFB Gagetown. In 1986, Cpl Sullivan appealed his court martial sentence. From the Court Martial Appeals Court decision.

2 The facts are not in dispute. All of the charges involved teenaged boys. At the time of the offences four of those boys were fourteen or fifteen years of age and one was eighteen years of age. The appellant had met the boys through his position as an instructor of altar boys at the Base Roman Catholic Chapel and through his position as a counsellor in social youth organizations in a town nearby the Base. The four younger boys were children of service personnel stationed on the Base. The offences took place at the accused’s quarters on the Base where the boys visited with the accused regularly.

3 As to the first count, the facts were that the appellant and the boy had been acquainted for two years and during that time the boy would go to the appellant’s residence twice each week. On the particular occasion, after the boy arrived at the appellant’s residence, he was given alcoholic beverages and was shown a pornographic movie. At the appellant’s suggestion the boy changed into his gym shorts and subsequently removed all of his clothing after which the appellant encouraged the boy to masturbate and then the appellant masturbated the boy and performed fellatio on him.

Reading further on in the decision, one can see the logic by which the Canadian Armed Forces was able to try child sexual assaults via military tribunal.

8 Counsel for the appellant contends that while the court may have jurisdiction to try the appellant, in the circumstances it should not have done so having regard to recent changes in the National Defence Act with respect to jurisdiction which are the result of amendments made to the Criminal Code of Canada. The reference was, of course, to changes in s. 60 of the NationalDefence Act which takes away the jurisdiction of a Court Martial to try cases of sexual assault if committed in Canada. The section provides:

60. A service tribunal shall not try any person charged with any of the following offences committed in Canada:

(a) murder;

(b) manslaughter;

(c) sexual assault;

(d) sexual assault with a weapon, threats to a third party or causing bodily harm;

(e) aggravated sexual assault; or

(f) an offence under ss. 249 to 250.2 of the Criminal Code.

Prior to this change the relevant limitation had been to charges of rape. Sexual assault includes the former offence of rape, the former offence of indecent assault against females and against males by either a male or a female. But the offence of gross indecency is not an included offence in sexual assault nor is sexual assault an included offence in gross indecency. An important distinction between the two offences is that the absence of the consent by the victim to the act is an element of the offence of sexual assault but is not an element of the offence of gross indecency. Counsel submits that the change which prohibits prosecution of a broad range of sexual offences should be regarded by us as a policy against prosecution by a service tribunal of other offences of a sexual nature in favour of prosecution in the criminal courts of the land. The short answer to this is that Parliament has not disturbed the jurisdiction to prosecute some acts of gross indecency. The jurisdiction in relation to these acts remains as it was, so that charges of gross indecency may be tried by court martial if the crime was committed in Canada.

14 While Parliament has taken away the jurisdiction of the military court to try some offences against the person, it has not disturbed the jurisdiction to try other offences which have a real military nexus or service connection.

15 In this case the offences were committed by Sullivan who was a serviceman and they were committed in service quarters on the base against the children of service personnel who lived there. The case had all of the elements present in Belford. It offended morale and discipline and struck deeply at the integrity of the military establishment. In my opinion, there was indeeda real military nexus or service connection within the meaning of the cases referred to. This ground of appeal fails.

As a side note, there’s a reason why the military loved to place special emphasis on the age of fourteen. At the time, fourteen was the age of consent. If the military had charged Sullivan with molesting anyone under the age of 14, that not only changed the optics of the crime in the eyes of the public, but that also means the military loses the ability to prosecute via service tribunal as no one under the age of consent can consent to sexual relations. This is why in the case of Canadian Forces officer Captain McRae, the military reduced all of the charges against McRae to only the charges related to a teenaged boy with the initials of P.S.. P.S. was 14 when McRae was charged. P.S. was the only boy over 14. The rest of the children McRae was known to have abused were ages 5 to 13.
So, this brings up the question. How many other military chaplains were convicted of child molestation and quietly dealt with in house by the Canadian Forces disciplinary system.

It should be noted that after Angus McRae was booted from the military, he ended up going for treatment at Southdown. After that Angus McRae ended up in Scarborough Ontario where he was arrested and charged with molesting two brothers. Angus McRae was initially going to plead innocent, but changed his plea when the Crown informed him that they had complaints from 10 other children.

In 2005 Roger Bazin paid the family of an Ontario teen $24,000 to settle out of court with the family. It was alleged that Bazin had sexual relations with the family’s teenaged son.

As an officer in the Chaplaincy Branch, Bazin would have been involved with the prosecutions of other kiddie diddling members of the catholic clergy on the bases in Canada.

And as Anus McRae illustrates, the Canadian Forces simply moved their troubled clergy from one base to another.
The Canadian Armed Forces KNEW they had a problem with the Catholic clergy on the bases in Canada.

The chapels on base all had rectories.
These rectories were all systematically removed in the late ‘80s.

Jurisdiction of the CFNIS

Trying to define the jurisdiction of the CFNIS and the military police is about as easy as trying to nail jello to the wall. Sadly, this is more to do with the failure of Parliament to close the holes in the National Defence Act than anything else.

In 1987, the Crown of Canada took a man by the name of John Patrick Nolan to the Supreme Court to try to have his lower court appeal overturned.

The Crown argued that military police are “Peace Officers” and therefore can arrest anyone at anytime. The Supreme Court squashed that.

In the Supreme Court of Canada case Regina v. Nolan, the Supreme Court of Canada declared that the Canadian Forces military police are not a secondary civilian police force and have no jurisdiction over civilians except for when enforcing regulations that specifically apply to civilians located on Defence Establishments.
I have attached a copy of Regina v. Nolan below.

1987scr1_1212 Download

Some key points of Regina v. Nolan are this.
” The military policeman had no authority under s. 2(f)(i) of the Code to demand that the accused provide a breathalyzer sample. That section, which prescribes that “peace officer” includes “officers and men of the Canadian Forces who are appointed for the purposes of section 134 of the National Defence Act “, does not extend the authority of military police to act as “peace officers” throughout a province and in relation to all residents of a province, duplicating the role and function of the civil police. Section 2 of the Code serves only to grant additional powers to enforce the criminal law to persons who must otherwise operate within the limits of their statutory or common law sources of authority. In the case of military policemen, the purposes of s. 134 are clear: the section provides that they may exercise authority over persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline. That is the full extent of the grant of power. Section 2 (f)(i) must be construed, therefore, as extending to persons appointed for the purposes of s. 134 of the National Defence Act the additional authority to enforce the Criminal Code , but only in relation to persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline. “
-and-
” The authority to demand that the accused provide a breathalyzer sample can be derived in this case, however, from the definition of “peace officer” in s. 2(f)(ii) of the Code. Section 2 (f)(ii) establishes that “officers and men” of the Canadian Forces are peace officers when “employed on duties that the Governor in Council, in regulations made under the National Defence Act for the purposes of this paragraph, has prescribed to be of such a kind as to necessitate that the officers and men performing them have the powers of peace officers”. Under s. 22.01(2) of the Queen’s Regulations and Orders for the Canadian Forces, made under the National Defence Act for the purposes of s. 2(f)(ii) of the Code, military policemen have the powers of peace officers when they perform any lawful duties “as a result of a specific order or established military custom or practice” when those duties are related to certain matters including the maintenance and protection of law and order and the protection of property or persons. Here, the officer had authority under the Government Property Traffic Regulations to enforce the applicable speed limits against a civilian driving on the base and, having stopped him for the purposes of enforcing the speed limit, the officer derived further authority from s. 28(1) of the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations. This section, which applies to persons not subject to the Code of Service Discipline, prescribes that a military policeman is “authorized to arrest without warrant any person found committing any criminal offence … on or with respect to any defence establishment or whom on reasonable and probable ground he believes to have committed such offence . . . .” A military police officer who has clear statutory authority to enforce the law and who is sent out on a patrol on a base is abiding by “established military practice” in fulfilling his role by attempting to enforce the law and he meets the conditions imposed by s. 22.01(2). Therefore, when s. 22.01(2) of the Queen’s Regulations and Orders for the Canadian Forces is read with s. 28(1) of the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations, the arresting officer was a peace officer within the meaning of s. 2(f)(ii) of the Code and he was entitled to invoke the statutory authorization of s. 235(1) of the Code. The fact that the accused was arrested outside the military base did not deprive the military policeman of his authority. Given the instantaneous police warning to the accused to stop his vehicle and the detention immediately outside the gates of the base, there was such a clear nexus between the offence committed on the base and the detention off the base that the military police retained their status and authority as peace officers. “

Long story short, the military police only have jurisdiction over civilians when they are enforcing very specific regulations. Those two regulations are the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulation and the Government Property Traffic Regulation.

The following document is one of many that would seem to throw a monkey wrench into the workings of the military justice system so far as it having jurisdiction over civilians.

Here, the Canadian Forces are admitting that they don’t have jurisdiction over all civilian offences committed by civilians on Defence Establishments. For the CFNIS to claim jurisdiction over a civilian for having committed a criminal code offence on a Defence Establishment, the CFNIS would have to have arrested the civilian within a certain period of time after the offence occured, and within a certain distance from the base. Mr. P.S. molested me from 1978 until 1980 on CFB Namao which is just north of Edmonton. Mr. P.S. currently resides in Fort Erie, Ontario. The distance between Edmonton Garrison, AB and Fort Erie, ON is 2786 km. I think that 30 years and 3k km is stretching CFNIS jursidiction to the extreme.

Another interesting document that casts doubts on the arrest jurisdiction of the CFNIS is the following from CFPM 2120-4-0. This document originated in 1998, just after the creation of the CFNIS. This document was re-issued to all bases and units in 2006.

*NDHQ POLICY DIRECTIVE MILITARY POLICE INVESTIGATION POLICY*
*2120-4-0 (CFPM)*
*Vice Admiral G.L. Garnett, Vice Chief of Defence Staff*

Pretty Straightforward, right?
Wrong.
In December of 2015, when I realized that RCMP Inspector Akrum Ghadban was not going to be involved in the second phase of the investigation into my complaint against Mr. P.S., and that he was stepping aside to let the CFNIS run their show, I filed a complaint with the “Civilian And Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police”.
The CCC-RCMP found in favour of the RCMP.
But for a rather interesting reason.

Basically, unless the CFNIS offer an investigation to the outside civilian authorities having jurisdiction, the RCMP cannot insist that the CFNIS hand over the investigation.

On February 9th, 2015, I had a telephone conversation with Lt. Col. David Antonyshyn of the Office of the Judge Advocate General. In this conversation Mr. Antonyshyn stated that “domestic matters that occur within the PMQs” are always pushed to the outside civilian authorities. Mr. Antonyshyn also stated that the CFNIS do not have sole jurisdiction on the bases for Criminal Code matters, they have at most concurrent jurisdiction.

In 2014, Madame Marie Deschamps was tasked with reviewing the military police, including the CFNIS, to see how they were dealing with sexual assaults amongst service members. Her report was very damning of the defective military justice system. More importantly, her report was accepted by the Chief of Defence staff as being valid and true.

excerpt from
External Review into Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces

The full report of the External Review Authority is available here:

era-final-report-(april-20-2015)-eng Download

Important Excerpts are available here:

Excerpts from ERA report Download

Even though Lt. Gen. Christine Whitecross insists that matters involving children and cadets (12 to 18 year olds) are handed off to the outside civilian authorities, and even though CFAO 2120-4-0 says that offences in which the offender is a civilian will be “offered” to the outside civilian authorities, and even though Madame Marie Deschamps stated in her review that offences involving civilians are referred to the outside civilian justice system, and even though Lt. Col. David Antonyshyn states that domestic matters are always handed off to the outside civilian authorities, the CFNIS in my case held on to jurisdiction in a matter of a civilian teenager sexually abusing a civilian child.

This problem arises due to the loosey-goosey language in the National Defence Act. The National Defence Act says who the military police have jurisdiction over. However, the National Defence Act does not state who the military police do not have jurisdiction over.

And that’s a very dangerous precedent.

Basically, the CFNIS chain of command can choose on a case by case basis who they have jurisdiction over and who they don’t have jurisdiction over.

And that leads to the possibility of all sorts of political interference.

I’ll be willing to bet you dollars to donuts that had Mr. P.S. not been anointed the sole victim of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae in July of 1980, and had Mr. P.S. not gone on to sue the Office of the Minister of National Defence in March of 2001, and had the Office of the Minister of National Defence in November of 2008 not accepted General Legal Liability for the personal injuries that Mr. P.S. suffered at the hands of a Canadian Forces officer, I firmly believe that the CFNIS would have handed my matter off to the RCMP in Morinville.

However, as the Office of the Minister of National Defence accepted General Legal Liability and admitted that the sexual abuse that Mr. P.S. endured caused him personal injuries, it could be argued that those personal injuries suffered by Mr. P.S. caused Mr. P.S. to act out his abuse on younger children living on Canadian Forces Base Namao. Therefore, a matter like this would have possibly exposed the Office of the Minister of National Defence to further civil legal action brought forth by the numerous other victims of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.

So, it should be of no surprise to anyone, that the CFNIS would have kept this investigation away from the civilian authorities. After all, the civilian authorities have no fealty to the Office of the Minister of National Defence.

Remember, there has to be a reason why the CFNIS edited a statement that was given to them by Mr. P.S. in 2011.

Telephone call between Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock and Mr. P.S.
***“Already handled by the military”***

Now, compare what Mr. P.S. stated to Sgt. Hancock with what Sgt. Hancock in turn submitted to the Alberta Crown.

Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock’s submission to the Alberta Crown.

I wonder why CFNIS investigator Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock felt the need for the Alberta Crown to not know that Mr. P.S. considers that the military has handled things for him.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m really curious to know just what exactly the military handled for Mr. P.S., who is a multi-time convicted child molester. And more importantly, why is the military handling things for child molesters?