Back in 2019, I was trolling around the government website that lists all ATI requests that have been filed with the various departments and what the outcome of those reports was.
One ATI request caught my eye. Someone had requested a copy of all of the General Occurence Reports from DND related to “Sexual Assault” that occured on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980.
I filed a request with DND for a copy of this information on October 10 2019.
I just received a copy of this report on Friday July 3rd 2020.
There were three “sexual assaults” on CFB Namao in the years of 1978 until 1980.
The first was related to a male exposing himself to young females at the base rec centre. The fact that the military police administered a polygraph to this person indicates that this person would have been subject to the Code of Service Discipline. This event occured in November of 1978.
The next incident occured in the vicinity of Northtown Mall in May of 1979. A member of the Canadian Forces exposed himself from his waist to his ankles to a girl. The City of Edmonton police and the CFB Edmonton police worked on this matter. The fact that the incident report indicate that the male was “dress in civilian clothing” and the fact that the CFB Edmonton military police we called in by the Edmonton Police Service also indicates that this was a person subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
Then of course there’s the matter of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.
Curiously, there is one incident that is missing.
In June of 1980, Corporal Larry King, who was 39 years old at the time, had been sentenced to 3 yers in prison for choking and raping a 16-year-old Edmonton girl.
Corporal Larry King, 39, was sentenced in civilian court to three years in prison for choking and raping a 16-year-old Edmonton Girl
There were three sexual assaults in two years in addition to all of the sexual assaults that P.S. and Captain McRae committed on CFB Namao. You can’t tell me that the Canadian Forces was a safe environment for children to grow up in.
In this petition I am asking that Parliament strike an inquiry to look at this issue of child sexual abuse that occurred on the Canadian Forces bases in Canada. Child sexual abuse occurred at least as frequently on base as it did in the civy world. Because of that you’d expect to see some sort of statistics that indicate this. But DND has no numbers available. DND can’t (or isn’t willing to) publish statistics for sexual assaults committed against children on the bases.
Taking into account the unwillingness of DND to share these numbers. And taking into consideration that in 2011 Colonel Tim Grubb stated that there was a disturbingly higher incidence of child sexual abuse within the defence community, there should be some sort of numbers to indicate this.
DND has nothing.
And even when DND did offer up information, it was wrong. For instance, recently I asked in a Freedom of Information request for a spread sheet indicating how many charges were laid per year for sexual crimes committed against children.
What I received instead was a tally of all of the sexual assaults prosecuted through the military justice system since 2002. DND and the Provost Marshal have no records from prior to 2002.
To be quite frank, the number of sexual assault charges was alarming, as was the number of “unfounded” investigations. But that’s a windmill for someone else to tilt at.
The following charges are not “Sexual assault” as defined under the both the 1970 and the 1985 Criminal Code of Canada: Gross Indecency; Indecent Assault; Buggery; Sexual Interference; Invitation to Sexual Touching; Sexual Exploitation; Incest.
Prior to 1985, the Canadian Forces could not conduct a service tribunal for “Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape”. The above charges are not rape. From 1985 until 1998 the Canadian Forces could not conduct a service tribunal for “Murder, Manslaughter, and Sexual Assault”. The above charges are “sexual offences”, they are not “sexual assault”.
As such, these charges are considered to be “Service Offences” and they are charges that not only can the CFNIS and the military police investigate, but they are charges that can be dealt with in a service tribunal.
I have since submitted to DND an Freedom of Information request for a list of investigations and prosecutions for the specific charges indicated above.
It has been explained to me by the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada that the SAMPIS record keeping system that the CFNIS and the base military police use is very limited in how it can be searched and the type of data that it can provide. Sounds like a defect by design.
Also explained to me by both the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada and the Library and Archives Canada is that DND and the CF had horrific to almost non-existent record keeping prior to the early 2000’s.
This is why an external inquiry completely free of the encumbrances of the Department of National Defence is the only way that the truth will be allowed to come out.
As a matter of policy DND maintains no records of former military dependants that live on the bases in Canada. The only way to have former military dependants come forward would be to make an official public request. DND and the Canadian Armed Forces aren’t willingly going to go and find all of these former military dependants. Yes, there are base brat groups on Facebook. However, it is apparent that the number of former brats in the base brat groups on Facebook is a very small drop in the sea. Also, as I’ve noticed, some brat groups tend to censor sensitive posts.
Making further amendments to the National Defence Act is also something that I am asking for via this petition. I think that it is absolutely ridiculous that a 3-year time bar can effective prevent any form of criminal investigation from being commenced against a person who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline prior to 1998. The Criminal Code of Canada has no equivalent “statute of limitations” for indictable offences.
I am also asking for amendments to be made to the National Defence Act that would render null and void any decision by a commanding officer to dismiss charges that had been brought against their subordinate for crimes that amount to child sexual abuse. The idea that a person with no legal training, and no duty to uphold the Criminal Code of Canada is somehow capable of deciding whether or not their subordinate should face charges is absurd.
You can download a copy of Legislative Summary LS-311E using the “Download” button below.
2(a)(1) on page 12 talks about the implications of the 3-year time bar and why it had to be removed in 1998. I know the 3-year time bar affects modern day CFNIS investigations as Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk told me in 2018 that due to information from his legal an investigation would not be commenced as charges could not be laid due to the 3-year time bar which existed when the Criminal Code offence of Obstruction is alleged to have occurred.
2(d) on page 18 talks about the Summary Investigation flaw and how commanding officers could dismiss charges that they wouldn’t have been able to try the accused on. 2(d) also highlights that once a commanding officer dismissed charges related to a service offence that those charges or similar charges arising out of the same or similar facts could never be brought against the accused at a later date.
I believe that the art of investigative journalism is dead in this country. If it’s not out right dead at this point in time, then it’s pretty well on death’s doorstep.
I believe that “media consolidation” and the move towards infotainment is responsible for the sad state of our media.
Editors now direct their teams based upon a calculation of “eyeballs / dollar”. The more eyeballs a story can bring in, the more advertising dollars the network can enjoy.
The number of investigative journalists is at such an all time low that simple things like an election throw most news room into chaos.
As a result of this chronic under staffing, journalism in this country seems to be able to handle only one thing at a time.
But it never used to be like this.
We used to have a media that asked the though questions and demanded the answers.
Nowadays reporters are afraid to ask questions because it might hurt the feelings of the person they’re asking the question of.
In the matter of child sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces, all the news media has to do in this matter is to ask the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence some very simple and straight forward questions.
10 simple little questions.
No direct allegations against anyone.
No accusations of wrongdoing.
Just some simple little questions.
First question: Who investigates child sexual abuse cases in which a child is sexually abused on a Defence Establishment either by a civilian or by a person subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
Second question: Do either the base Military Police or the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service have specially trained sections that deal with victims of child sexual abuse.
Third question: In light of the findings of the External Review conducted by retired Supreme Court justice Madame Marie Deschamps, how can the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence ensure that investigations of childhood sexual abuse didn’t fail due to the very same shortcomings highlighted by the External Review.
Fourth question: What is the unfounded rate for childhood sexual assault investigations within the Canadian Forces Military Police Group.
Fifth question: How many investigations are there undertaken every year that look at the following crimes committed against children: “Indecent assault”; “Gross Indecency”; “Buggery”; “Sexual Interference”; “Invitation to Sexual Touching”; “Sexual Exploitation”; You would have to ask for these very specific Criminal Code offences as DND and the CF have a very sneaky manner of using sleight of hand to substitute “Sexual Assault” for the specific Criminal Code offences listed above. Sexual Assault is a Criminal Code offence all on it’s own and it is separate from the charges listed above.
Sixth question: On July 6th, 2010 Canadian Forces Provost Marshal Colonel Tim Grubb released a report that stated “the DND community has a noticeably and disturbingly higher per capita rate of sexual violations against children, including child pornography, firearms offences and other assaults when compared to the rest of the Canadian population”. Where are the military police investigations that correspond with these “violations against children” and were these matters successfully prosecuted. Were these matters prosecuted in the military justice system or were these matters transferred into the civilian justice system.
Seventh question: Prior to 1998 there existed a flaw in the National Defence Act that placed a three-year-time-bar on all Service Offences. Service offences include “Indecent assault”, “Gross Indecency”, “Buggery”, “Sexual Interference”, “Invitation to Sexual Touching”, “Sexual Exploitation”, and “Sexual Assault”. Indictable offences have no statute of limitations in the civilian justice system. How does the Canadian Forces work around this legal hurdle to ensure that persons who were sexually abused on defence establishments as children have the same legal rights as persons who didn’t live on defence establishments as children and who were abused by persons with no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces?
LS-311E describing the effects of the 3-year time bar.The three-year-time-bar still has implications that affect modern day investigations.
Eighth question: Prior to November 1997 the National Defence Act required that a commanding officer conduct a summary investigation AFTER the military police had laid charges against the commanding officer’s subordinate. Prior to November 1997 the commanding officer had the full authority of the National Defence Act to dismiss any charge, military or civilian, that had been brought against their subordinate. The charges that a commanding officer could dismiss included, but were not limited to: “Indecent assault”, “Gross Indecency”, “Buggery”, “Sexual Interference”, “Invitation to Sexual Touching”, “Sexual Exploitation”, and “Sexual Assault”. As LS-311E explained, once these charges were dismissed by the commanding officer, these charges or similar charges arising out of the same facts could never be brought against the accused at a later date be either a civilian or military authority. How does the Canadian Armed Forces deal with these matters where a commanding officer may have dismissed the charge prior to 1998, and the victim, now as an adult, desires to press charges unaware that the military has already once dismissed the charges brought against their abuser?
Legislative Summary LS-311E A legal document for Parliament that accompanied Bill C-25 in 1998.
Ninth Question: Are members of the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service and their superiors exempted from Section 83 of the National Defence Act? How does the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence ensure that Section 83 is not utilized in such a manner by the chain of command to limit and control the scope of a CFNIS investigation.
Current language in the National Defence Act makes it very hard for CFNIS investigators to be independent of the chain of command.
Tenth Question: In 2015, just after General Jonathan Vance became the new Chief of Defence Staff, he told Canadian Armed Forces military personnel that they could call 9-1-1 (civilian police) to report sexual assaults if they didn’t feel confident in the military system. Why wasn’t that same allowance made to civilian victims of military sexual assault? Why do civilian victims still have to deal with the military police and the CFNIS to report the crimes committed against them.
Military Personnel can call 9-1-1. Former base brats are stuck with the base military police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service
These are all simple question. Nothing too hard to ask. These are questions that I can’t ask though as I’m a nobody so far as the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are concerned.
The news media? They have powers that mere members of the public don’t have.
They have access to the eyeballs.
Let’s be honest. Nobody reads my blog. The only time it gets any type of traffic is when I make a post to one of the brat groups. Other than that, there’s no traffic.
As the headline says, today I received the official word from Global News that there is no interest in pursuing our story.
If I had to surmise why this is such a difficult story for the media to cover, I would have to say that it’s the ignorance that is inherent in the media.
The media for the most part are “Book smart and street dumb”.
The current reporter wouldn’t be the first one to state to me that if there had been a problem in the Canadian Forces, they would have heard about it by now.
We know for a fact that the Canadian Forces has had some rather dubious characters in its employ: Colonel Russell Williams; Brigadier General Roger Bazin; Captain Father Angus McRae; Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan; Blackmore; Private Buckland; Private Clabby; Corporal Ryan; 2nd Lt. Sheehy-Tremblay; Seaman Mitchell; Corporal Turner; The gang from Somalia; And many, many more. But these were the ones that weren’t quietly swept out of the military.
We also know from the report released by Colonel Tim Grubb in the aftermath of the Colonel Russell Williams fiasco that the review conducted by the Provost Marshal found a “disturbingly higher” incidence of child sex abuse in the defence community”
I asked the reporter I was most recently involved with if Colonel Tim Grubb’s report, along with the 3-year time bar, and the Summary Investigation flaw caused him to have any concerns. He said that he couldn’t see how these were related to one another.
The reporter that I most recently dealt with says that he recently filed an FOI request with DND asking DND how many members of the Canadian Forces were charged with child abuse.
Child abuse is not a crime. No, really, it’s not. And I don’t mean that it’s legal to abuse children. There is no Criminal Code offence called “Child Abuse”. So of course, DND is going to respond that it could find no records.
I told this reporter many times over that if he wanted to look for criminal convictions that he’d have to look for these charges using very specific terms such as “151 – Sexual Interference, 152 – Invitation to Sexual Touching, 153 – Sexual Exploitation” for crimes that occurred after 1985, and Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery for sexual crimes that occurred prior to 1985.
And even at that, DND didn’t start maintaining a database of offences until the early 2000’s. This means that if you wanted to look for sexual crimes committed against children prior to 1998, you’d have to search through every service member’s file held at the Library and Archives Canada. To do so though, you’d need the permission of either the service member or the service member’s next of kin if the service member has been deceased for less than 20 years.
And I know that DND is very deceitful with the information that it releases. Back in 2018 I filed an ATI with DND ” how many cases of child sexual abuse occurred pre-1998 and were brought to the attention of the CFNIS/MP/CFPM port-1998 and declined prosecution due to the 3-year time bar”. DND fought me on this first arguing that this would require them to create new records which they weren’t obligated to. The Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada became involved and DND finally released the information I requested. Or so it appeared. What clued me off that something was amiss was that CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 was absent from the release of documents. GO 2011-5754 was my complaint against P.S. that I filed in March of 2011.
What I did realize quickly is that DND had released to me a list of “Sexual Assaults”. Sexual Assault is a unique Criminal Code offence that does not include “Indecent Assault”, “Gross Indecency”, “Buggery”, “Sexual Interference”, “Invitation to Sexual Touching”, and “Sexual Exploitation”.
This is something that the media in Canada just can’t seem to wrap their heads around. The media seems to equate “no records can be found” with “no crimes were ever committed”.
I suggested to this reporter that if he really wanted to see just how big of a problem sexual crimes committed against children had been back in the days prior to 1998 that Global perhaps run some spots during its nightly news broadcasts asking viewers to call in to Global to report if they were ever the victim of child sexual abuse on a Canadian Forces Base. This doesn’t accuse the Canadian Forces or anyone with the Canadian Forces of having committed anything. It’s just a request for victims to come forward. Once the victims come forward, then you listen to their stories. Once you have their stories, then you pick a common theme. Once you have that common theme, then you start hammering away on DND until DND owns up to the skeletons in their closet.
Sitting around on your arse, waiting for the Minister of National Defence or the Chief of Defence Staff to come forward and say “Hey look, we had a problem, we fucked up”, is going to waste a lot of time.
If you want an organization like DND to respond, you need to crank up the heat and make it uncomfortable for them.
The media also seems to equate the lack of victims willing to go on record as an indication of their honesty. Many former brats that I’ve spoken to, whom came from dysfunctional families on base, are for the most part terrified of saying anything against the Canadian Forces. Then there are the brats who are terrified of saying anything out of fear of some of the members of the base brat groups on Facebook.
I know for a fact that a lot of the Facebook groups for base brats will censor my posts and will remove them. So no, the base brat groups cannot be viewed as being a cross section of typical former brats, as the views espoused in some of these groups are very sanitized.
I’ve been trying to garner media attention since way back in 2011 when I first learnt of the connection between my babysitter, P.S. and Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.
The media see absolutely no conflict of interest with having a “police” organization such as the CFNIS conduct investigations which may subject their superiors to civil actions. There were 25 children who had been sexually abused on Canadian Forces Base Namao by Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae and his altar boy P.S.. McRae taught P.S. how to sexually abuse children. McRae encouraged P.S. to abuse children. McRae requested that P.S. escort children over to the chapel to be abused by both Captain McRae and P.S. after administering alcohol to the children.
P.S. sued the Minister of National Defence in March of 2001 and settled out of court in November of 2008 with the Minister of National Defence after the Department of National Defence accepted General Legal Liability for the personal damaged that P.S. endured at the hands of McRae. I can’t say if P.S. settled with the Archdiocese of Edmonton or the estate of Angus McRae, but I can’t see DND absorbing all of the costs when P.S. had named all three parties. If each party shared 1/3 of the liability, this means that P.S. walked away with close to $600,000.00. Not bad for someone who wasn’t as innocent as the Canadian Forces portrayed him to be back in 1980.
Because the Department of National Defence accepted legal liability, the chain of liability has well been established. If P.S. were to admit that (a) he sexually abused the children he was babysitter while he was 14 years of age and older, and (b) that he acted upon Captain McRae’s instructions and brought the children he was babysitting over to the chapel to be sexually abused by both Captain McRae and himself, the victims of both Captain McRae and P.S. would have a very simple time arguing in court that they were entitled to at least the same amount of compensation that the Department of National Defence agreed to compensate P.S.. Now, let’s say that there were in fact 25 children being sexually abused by Captain McRae and P.S.. And lets say that P.S. had been awarded the maximum that the Canadian Forces Director of Civil Claims and Liabilities is authorized to sign for, which is $200,000.00. That’s five million dollars in payouts at a minimum.
Why don’t I just sue the military on my own? Suing the military without a direct connection being established between myself and P.S. would be an extreme exercise in futility, especially seeing as how the 1980 CFSIU investigation established that P.S. was in fact the only victim of sexual abuse and that there were no other victims. This is also why suing P.S. for civil damages would be out of the question as well. Surely if P.S. had been molesting children and assisting Captain McRae with his devious schemes back in 1979 to 1980, the military police and the CFSIU would have handed P.S. over to the RCMP, right?
The media seems to like to think of the members of the CFNIS as being police officers just like civilian police officers. The CFNIS and the Provost Marshal operate completely different than any civilian police force. CFNIS investigators do not run their own investigation. SAPMIS, the record keeping system used by the military police is not secure. The investigator’s superiors running the investigation aren’t necessarily trained in law enforcement and may not even have training in the field of the investigation being undertaken. And more alarmingly, there are no provisions in the National Defence Act which exempt CFNIS investigators from section 83 of the National Defence Act. This means that investigators with the CFNIS are bound by the National Defence Act to obey all lawful commands of their superiors upon threat of life in prison for disobeying the lawful command.
The Chain of Command for the CFNIS looks kinda like this: Minister of National Defence –> Chief of Defence Staff –> Vice Chief of Defence Staff –> Provost Marshal –> CFNIS commanding officer –> CFNIS regional commanding officer –> CFNIS investigator.
You can see why this is a bad arrangement and you can hopefully see why the CFNIS need to be disbanded. The RCMP, as troubled of an agency as they are, are completely outside of the command influence of the Canadian Forces chain of command.
The sad thing is that the media can’t see this conflict of interest.
In the next little while, I’m going to start naming all of the reporters that I’ve dealt with since 2011.
Global has shown no commitment.
CBC has shown no commitment.
CTV has shown no commitment.
And to be honest, media consolidation in this country has probably been the single largest contributing factor which explains the media’s lack of interest.
All I know is that these reporters and these news agencies are helping the Canadian Armed Forces keep their dirty little secrets hidden and buried in the past. I’ll be 49 in a few months. Statsically speaking, I have 20 years or so left to live So if it takes another 10 years to find a news agency willing to get off its high-horse and actually start doing some investigative work, I might be 65 by the time this story hits the headlines.
And that’s all the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence have to do is simply wait us out.
Most of the brats that lived on base during the ’50s are starting to pass on.
Next to go will be the brats that lived on the bases in the ’60s.
All DND has to do is wait until 2040 and most of the kids who were in their teens during the ’70s will start passing away.
By 2050 DND won’t have to worry about former sexually abused military dependants making noise.
There’s a reason why DND transferred control of the PMQs to an independent arms length agency in the 1990s
There’s a reason why the number of family PMQs on base are dwindling and why DND and the Canadian Forces are encouraging members to buy homes and live in the civilian world instead of in the PMQ patches on base.
There’s far too much liability and risk in running company towns. Especially when you’re the employer and you provide the security services.
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.
The mucky-mucks at National Defence Head Quarters must be really pleased with how extremely disinterested the media is with the topic of child sexual abuse that occurred on the bases in Canada.
I first had dealings with this reporter back in the summer of 2019. They seemed interested in the story, but they just couldn’t find the time. Other things kept popping up, other issues kept taking precedence.
This reporter, like many before them, laments the lack of people willing to come forward, or if they do come forward, they won’t go on camera and they won’t allow their names to be used.
And to be honest, this isn’t the first reporter that strung me along with a tenuous interest in the story that I had to tell.
For me it’s not that hard to understand why people would be unwilling to come forward and go on camera.
Back in the ’90s and even up to the mid 2000s, if you told me that I had been sexually abused, I probably would have told you to go fuck right off. There was no way on Earth that I was going to admit that I had been abused on CFB Namao and then again on CFB Downsview primarily at the Denison Armouries.
If you were a male military dependant, and you were buggered on base, you kept your damn mouth shut. When I was growing up on base, the general attitude was that only queers, fags, and homos took it up the ass. And yes, by the time my family was posted from Canadian Forces Base Greisbach to Canadian Forces Base Downsview, I fully understood what homosexuality was, and I fully understood from Terry that homosexuality was a mental illness and that I was going to get electroshock treatments at the Alberta Hospital if I kept it up. I was 9 when we moved to CFB Greisbach from CFB Namao. I was 12 when we left CFB Greisbach for CFB Downsview.
Terry was the “counsellor” that I started seeing after my arrival on CFB Greisbach. Terry was helping me to work though my attraction to other boys that I had exhibited when I was caught being buggered by a teen who was almost twice my age. It was August of 2011 when I learnt that “Terry” was actually Captain Terry Totzke, a military social worker with the Canadian Armed Forces. And I have no doubt that what Captain Terry Totzke was doing would in this day and age be called “conversion therapy”.
It was the military after all. It has been written that in the Canadian Forces men were sometimes buggered in an attempt to humiliate them or to “fix” disciplinary issues, or to simply “knock ’em down a peg or two”. After all, it seemed that as long as you were the person doing the buggering, you weren’t seen as being gay. If on the other hand you were the person being buggered, well that just opened up a whole can of worms.
When I had been sexually assaulted by Earl Ray Stevens while I lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview, one of his threats was that if I ever told anyone that I would be kicked out of cadets. Even though I wouldn’t learn about CFAO 19-20 until around 2015 I fully understood that gays and lesbians were not welcome in the Canadian Forces. Somehow Earl knew that my father was in the Canadian Forces, and Earl would remind me that if I ever told anyone, that my father would find out, and that if my father found out there would be dire consequences. And after having lived through those consequences on Canadian Forces Base Greisbach, I didn’t want to live through those consequences again. So, I pleasured Earl whenever he wanted it. It was just easier that way. Besides, as Earl had quipped once or twice, that by giving me money it was a fair trade.
The more I wonder about Earl the more I wonder how many other children he molested on military bases during his career in the Canadian Armed Forces. After all, the first time he assaulted me, he wasn’t at all shy or coy about it. His hand didn’t accidentally brush against my crotch behind closed doors. He grabbed my crotch knowing full well what he was doing. He also knew that by my lack of response, that I was an easy mark.
Homophobia in the military back in the ’60s through ’80s was nothing new. It was just a reflection of the attitudes of society, but it was amplified via the machismo that is typical in military organizations. And unlike general society, the Canadian Forces filter out who gets in and who doesn’t. So after awhile the military becomes nothing but a massive echo chamber of like minded attitudes.
The official policy of the Canadian Forces towards gays and lesbians was dictated by Canadian Forces Administrative Order 19-20 which concluded that homosexuality was a “sexual abnormality” only further reinforced homophobic attitudes in the military and normalized these attitudes.
My father always had a warped sense of humour. But it was typical for the guys he hung out with. When we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview he asked me once if I knew what Gay stood for. I looked at him kinda puzzled. He replied with a laugh “Got Aids Yet”. Another time he asked if I knew what AIDS stood for. Again another puzzled look to which he replied “Anally Injected Death Sentence”.
And with homophobia being as wide spread in the Canadian Forces as it was back then, I wasn’t the only military dependant that had to endure it. How many male children on the bases were abused and kept their mouths shut due to the rampant homophobia in the military? We’ll probably never know. How many male children ended up committing suicide due to their abuse on base and the fear of being labelled “gay” or “queer”? Again, we’ll probably never know.
I’ve submitted Access to Information Requests to DND looking for any type of studies that DND may have undertaken to look at the lives of military dependants. There never were any. And this makes sense, after all we were nothing more that DF&E.
Another problem that reporters with the media seem to have understanding is that there is no directory of military dependants. The Canadian Armed Forces keep absolutely no records of us aside from possibly our birth certificates in our serving parent’s file.
There are many groups on Facebook for former military dependants. But these groups seem to be filled with brats who came from functional families and who didn’t encounter any abnormal issues while they lived on base. Myself, I wouldn’t be in any of these groups if it wasn’t for my desire to find other former brats who had problems on base.
Some of the brats that I know are only in one group out of the many groups on Facebook for base brats. And they’re usually only in the one particular group because they were looking for someone very specific.
There is a department manager where I work. This manger runs one of the larger and more important departments at this operation. This manager had Googled my name a few years ago and had discovered my blog. This manger pulled me aside and confided in me that they too had been a military dependant and they too had been sexually abused on base. But this manger asked me to never divulge to anyone that they had been a military dependant. They said that they were ashamed of having been a dependant and that they didn’t want anyone at work to judge them based upon their childhood.
In my professional life, when I’m asked where I’m from and where I grew up, I just say my birth province. It’s far much easier that way.
Until the media step up to the plate and start actively looking for these other sexually abused military dependants, none will come forward.
And I think sadly this is the last reporter that I will ever be able to approach about this topic as the people whom I’ve placed this reporter in contact with have asked for me to stop giving their contact information out as these reporters never want to listen to what they’re being told, and these reporters keep pressing these other former military dependants to allow their names and faces to be used.
One former dependant was all ready to go a couple of years ago, but the reporter running with the story back then reneged on their promise of allowing this other victim to use an alias and to sit behind a screen while the interview was being conducted. This other reporter assured this other military dependant that their face would be pixelated during the post process. However, this meant that there would be a video recording of this dependant’s face.
A lot of former military dependants that I’ve spoken with are literally terrified of the Canadian Forces. Very little, if anything was done for them when they were abused. Some, but not all, came from dysfunctional homes where the father was abusive and the base MPs would often turn a blind eye.
And some, like me, would go on into their adult lives believing what they had been told when they were children living on the various Canadian Forces Bases. That they were responsible for what had happened, that they liked what had happened because they let it go on for so long, and that they had a mental illness because they were having sex with other boys twice their age.
It kept us silent.
The media’s deafness ensures our silence stays in place.
What could possibly be the reason that the CFNIS has been unable to bring charges against P.S. ?
Liability.
As I mentioned previously, if P.S. were to be criminally charged he would have to be charged under the Juvenile Delinquents Act (JDA).
The JDA didn’t really allow for any type of prison sentence for youths between the age of 14 through 18 as the JDA was more concerned with rehabilitation of the youth.
And as I’ve since learnt, children between the ages of 7 to 14 could be charged for criminal code offences, but to do so the Crown would have had to prove that the child knew right from wrong and understood the outcome of their actions.
P.S. has already had numerous convictions in his adult life for child sexual assaults. By facing more charges it’s not like he’s going to suffer any further loss of liberties or freedoms or further harm to his reputation.
The problem for the Canadian Forces is thus:
Captain McRae was found guilty by means of a courts martial for molesting P.S. on a defence establishment.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence at the time were responsible for all aspects of security and access control to the Defence Establishment.
Captain McRae at the time of the abuse was a member of the Regular Forces and was subject to the Code of Service Discipline around the clock whether he was on-duty or off-duty.
If the CFNIS were to get serious about locating all of the children from CFB Namao who were sexually abused by P.S., how many children would they find? Would the Alberta crown still turn a blind eye if it became aware that P.S. had molested over a dozen children on his own?
We know that P.S. was abused by Captain McRae. Was P.S. abusing the children he was babysitting as a direct result of the abuse he was suffering at the hands of Captain McRae?
It is also conceivable that P.S. was either requested or coerced by Captain McRae into bringing younger children over to the chapel to be molested by Captain McRae and possibly P.S.
If P.S. had been charged and brought in for questioning and in his defence he made statements to the effect that Captain McRae had forced him to bring young children over to the base chapel to be abused, that opens up a whole new can of worms for the military, especially if it came out the the military police or the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit in 1980 were aware, or should have reasonably been aware that Captain McRae was forcing or inducing P.S. to bring children over to the chapel for Captain McRae’s pleasure.
I did raise the possibility of interference in the CFNIS investigation due to the potential for civil liability during my Judicial Review. And yes, the Justice did say that this wasn’t a valid assumption as I had no idea who the P.S. was in the Court of Queen’s Bench action against the Minister of National Defence.
However, as of July 2015, I have verification from P.S. himself that P.S. is the person who filed the $4.3 million dollar action against the Canadian Forces. P.S. would only confirm the action was his, but he would not speak to the settlement.
If P.S. was found in a court of law to have molested myself, my brother, P.G., D.O., S.O., M.O., J.P., and the other numerous John and Janes Does, would this establish a direct link between the victims of P.S. and the Department of National Defence by way of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae?
With the laying of charges against P.S., linking the abuse we suffered at the hands of P.S. on CFB Namao to the actions of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae would be a very trivial matter in much the same sense that P.S. was able to link the abuse he suffered on CFB Namao to the Minister of National Defence.
Right now, the Minister of National Defence and the Provost Marshal have more reasons than not to scuttle any investigation into P.S.
In November of 2008 the Canadian Forces Director of Civil Claims and Liabilities accepted General Legal Liability for the Personal Damages that P.S. had suffered as a result of his abuse on CFB Namao at the hands of Captain McRae.
If P.S. had been charged by the CFNIS for molesting children on CFB Namao, would P.S. have plead innocent due to the duress that Captain McRae had placed him under due to the sexual abuse that McRae was inflicting upon P.S.?
This would have opened up the path for civil actions to be brought against the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the Minister of National Defence by the victims of both P.S. and of Captain McRae.
Remember, in civil court you only have to prove your argument based on probability.
If P.S. had never been abused by Captain McRae, would the victims of P.S. have ever suffered sexual abuse on that base?
The children that lived on CFB Namao were there at the pleasure of the Canadian Forces. Everyone on that base who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline were employees of the Canadian Forces.
If we were abused by P.S. and as a result of the attitudes in the Canadian Forces that resulted from military policy CFAO 19-20 and the Canadian Forces tried to cure us of our apparent “homosexuality” by the use of conversion therapy, is the Canadian Forces further liable? Don’t forget, the social workers that we were paired up with were regular force members of the Canadian Forces who were subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
Without charges being brought against P.S., the Department of Justice could argue in civilian court that we had never been abused, that we were either just lying, or that we were confused.
The Department of Justice could further argue in court that only P.S. was sexually abused on CFB Namao as he is the only person that Captain McRae was ever charged with molesting. And surely if other children were being sexualy abused by Captain McRae, then the military police and the CFSIU would have obviously heard about that, right?
Neat how that works out, eh?
And then there’s the other problem.
The Catholic Clergy within the defence community.
The Canadian Forces deemed male-on-male child sexual abuse to be “acts of homosexuality”.
Captain McRae had been investigated for “acts of homosexuality” in 1973. That’s seven years prior to his conviction in 1980.
If it were found out that the Canadian Forces were moving the kiddie-diddling clergy around just like the civilian churches were doing from the ’50s to the ’90s, what repercussions would that have for the military’s public image, not to mention the odds of a successful civil action against the Canadian Forces?
The Department of Justice on behalf of the Canadian Armed Forces wouldn’t be able to argue that the Canadian Forces had no idea of what Captain McRae was capable of before they posted Captain McRae to CFB Namao. The Canadian Forces investigated McRae for “acts of homosexuality” in 1973 at RMC Kingston. Subsequently the Canadian Forces investigated and prosecuted Captain McRae for Acts of Homosexuality on CFB Namao in May of 1980.
Captain McRae’s court martial isn’t the only one that I’ve seen where the military refered to male-on-male sexual abuse involving persons under the age of 18 as “acts of homosexuality”.
If a pattern emerged which indicated that the Canadian Forces were moving known kiddie-diddlers around from one base to the next in the hopes that the problem would go away, would this make the Canadian Forces even more susceptible to civil actions from former military dependants whom were sexually abused in the walled-off company towns that the Department of National Defence ran across the country?
Respect the Federal Privacy Act my ass. More like help the Canadian Forces avoid compensation lawsuits.
The Canadian Armed Forces obviously were concerned enough about the lawsuits being brought against the Catholic Archdiocese in Canada to change their rules to the point that they made it much more difficult for a victim of Canadian Forces military clergy to prove that they were a member of the Catholic church.
I was baptized at the base chapel on CFB Shearwater in Nova Scotia. The Military Ordinariate has never responded to my two requests.
And this isn’t by accident either. If I can’t prove that I was baptized, then why would I have any involvement with the church? When grandma came to live with us at CFB Summerside, she enrolled me in Sunday Bible school. While we were stationed at CFB Namao, Grandma took my brother and I to Sunday service every Sunday. I had my first communion at the base chapel on CFB Namao. I remember going into the confessional for the first time and talking to father McRae through the funny little window. McRae said one of his jokes and made me laugh. Even when we got punted down to CFB Greisbach, Grandma took my brother and I to Sunday service at the base chapel. After Grandma moved out, Sue promised my brother and I that we’d never have to go to church again. I don’t think my father was very religious at all. I can’t speak for my mother. And I really don’t think Sue was that much into religion.
How could the CFNIS have known anything about P.S. in 2011 when the abuse occurred back in 1978 through 1980? That’s the thing though. Sgt. Hancock knew about P.S. when Hancock interviewed me in March of 2011. Sgt. Christian Cyr knew about P.S. when Cyr talked to me on May 3rd, 2011.
A basic CPIC records check would have told the CFNIS quite a bit about P.S., but I don’t think this was the case in my matter.
In the information age, it would be very easy for the Canadian Forces to run some sort of database that sends alerts or flags when specific names are entered into their systems. A name like P.S. when entered into their CFNIS could be set to trigger alerts that tell the CFNIS to consult with the Judge Advocate General for example, or to contact a specific lawyer at the Department of Justice.
I don’t think that P.S. was bullshitting when he said to Sgt. Tenaschuk on August 11th, 2011 that “anything he had been involved in as a youth has already been handled by the military”. I think that by way of the out of court settlement reached with P.S. that the Minister of National Defence has agreed to handle things for P.S..
When I made friends with an RCMP Officer back in 2012, I gave this RCMP officer a copy of the Edmonton Journal newspaper article from 1985 which indicated that P.S. had been arrested and convicted in 1984 for molesting a boy in Manitoba, and that he had also been arrested and convicted in 1985 for molesting two boys, one on CFB Namao and one in the City of Edmonton. The RCMP constable ran P.S.’s name through CPIC. The RCMP officer wouldn’t say much more than that P.S. was on a sex offender’s registry, and that P.S. had numerous more charges and convictions between 1985 and the year 2000 for child sexual assaults, assault, and robbery.
P.S. tried to commit suicide in January of 2000.
This got me thinking. What if those child sexual assault charges weren’t new charges? What if the majority of charges related to Sexual Assault that P.S. faced between 1985 and the year 2000 were related to children from Canadian Forces Base Namao?
What if P.S. tried to kill himself because he realized that there were potentially so many children from CFB Namao that could possibly bring charges against him that he would never be free of the constant and ongoing investigations and charges?
Mr. P.S. lived on CFB Petawawa from the summer of 1980 until about 1985 when his father was posted back to CFB Edmonton. How many kids did he diddle on CFB Petawawa?
What if the Minister of National Defence, in agreeing to settle P.S.’s action out of court, also agreed that the military police would no longer bring charges against P.S. for assaults that P.S. had committed on CFB Namao?
Immunity Agreements are not unheard of. Procedures exist at both the Federal and Provincial levels.
Maybe it wasn’t an immunity agreement.
After all, members of the CFNIS are subject to section 83 of the National Defence Act and must obey the lawful commands of their superiors.
As was found during the Fynes Public Interest Hearing, investigators with the CFNIS do not run their own investigations. CFNIS investigations are directed and overseen by the chain of command.
Maybe it was just a good old fashioned order from somewhere up the chain of command that P.S. was not to ever be charged again for crimes that he committed on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Maybe this was why the CFNIS were so eager to grab this case.
The CFNIS had absolutely no problem handing my complaint against Earl Ray Stevens over to the Toronto Police Service. The TPS was successful in bringing six charges of sexual assault against Mr. Stevens in a matter of weeks.
Why?
Mr. Stevens at the time he was molesting me was not an employee of the Canadian Armed Forces. The Canadian Armed Forces bear absolutely no responsibility for the actions of Earl Ray Stevens. If I wanted to sue Mr. Stevens, I would have to go after Mr. Stevens himself.
This is why the CFNIS were more than happy to let the TPS get involved and let the TPS bring charges against Earl. It was no skin off their teeth.
I’m going to talk a little bit about the flaws in the National Defence Act that existed prior to 1985. Specifically how the National Defence Act played with the average Canadian’s lack of understanding about the criminal code.
I’ve frequently been told that I’m wrong. I’ve been told that the Canadian Armed Forces could never court martial a service member for sexual assaults committed against a child. I’ve been told that the military couldn’t conduct a service tribunal for the crimes of “Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape” prior to 1985.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada, Chapter N-4 National Defence Act Section 60
Well, there’s a problem with that. The problem is that rape was never a crime that could apply to males. Rape was a crime that could only apply to females:
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Criminal Code of Canada Section 143 – Rape.
There you have it. Rape is when a male has “sexual intercourse” with a female person who is not his wife. That automatically rules out males having sex with other males. It is also worth mentioning that when underage females were involved, the preferred charges were often Section 149 “Indecent Assault on a female”, or Section 146 “Sexual Intercourse with female under 14”.
What this means is that so long as the charge was not “Rape”, the military could conduct a service tribunal. This means that the Canadian Armed Forces could conduct a service tribunal for the offences indicated in sections 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, and 157 of the 1970 Criminal Code of Canada. And this criminal code was in place up to 1985. That means that the Canadian Forces had from 1950 until 1985 to conduct service tribunals for sexual crimes against children.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada, Chapter N-4 National Defence Act Section 120 gave the military the right to conduct service tribunals for Criminal Code matters
How many of these service tribunals did the Canadian Forces conduct? Your guess is as good as mine. It would appear that the record keeping system for criminal convictions prior to 1998 leaves a lot to be desired.
How many of these charges actually made it to a service tribunal? Again, your guess is as good as mine as prior to November 1997, the commanding officer of the accused could dismiss any charge that had been brought against their subordinate.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada, Chapter N-4 National Defence Act Sections 139 and 140 Commanding officers could dismiss service offence charges brought against their subordinate. Service offence charges also include all Criminal Code matters.
How many of these offences couldn’t be prosecuted due to the arbitrary 3-year time bar that the National Defence Act placed upon service offences? Remember, section 120 of the National Defence Act made Criminal Code matters into Service Offences, so the 3 -year time bar did place a “statute of limitations” on Criminal Code matters that did not have a “statute of limitations”. Again, we’ll probably never know. The Minister of National Defence could call an inquiry if he so chose to. But I really don’t think the Minister of National Defence really wants to open that Pandora’s box.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada, Chapter N-4 National Defence Act 3-year “statute of limitations” on all service offences which include all criminal code matters.
What’s also not clear to me is when someone comes forward with a complaint of child sexual abuse from back in the ’70s for example and claims that they were molested on base by a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Section 55(1) of the 1970 National Defence Act defines persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline. Section 55(2) states that a person who committed a crime while they were subject to the Code of Service Discipline continues to be liable for having committed a service offence even after they’ve left the military. Does this mean that the rules of the National Defence Act that were in place at the time also apply. Does that mean that Section 59 of the National Defence Act prevents the prosecution of historical child sexual assault matters?
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada, Chapter N-4 National Defence Act Continuing Liability for service offences which include all Criminal Code matters.
Charges other than rape.
Sex with an underage female:
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Criminal Code of Canada Section 146 – Underage
Section 146 is clearly not “Rape”. I believe that this would be called the “jail bait law”. I can only wonder how many times the Canadian Forces conducted a service tribunal for this crime. Notice that this is the charge for having “Sexual Intercourse” with a female child under the age of 14. This covers any age under the age of 14.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Criminal Code of Canada Section 146 (2). “Of previously Chaste character” – code speak for “slut shaming”
Section 146(2) is what we’d call “slut shaming” in the modern day. Basically what Criminal Code s. 146(2) is stating is that if a man has sex with a virgin between the ages of 14 and 16, he has committed an indictable offence and can be sent to prison for up to 5 years. This also seems to imply that if the girl isn’t a virgin, then he hasn’t committed a crime at all.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Criminal Code of Canada Section 146 (3) WTF?
Section 146(3) further states that the prosecutor has to show that the accused is MORE to blame than the girl otherwise the court can find the accused not guilty. I can see a lot of commanding officers using Section 146(3) in determining to not allow charges to proceed against their subordinate.
Criminal Code of Canada Here’s an interesting charge that also is not rape. As this is not rape, the Canadian Forces could conduct a service tribunal for this offence.
Section 148 of the 1970 Criminal Code is interesting. What exactly defines an idiot, imbecile, or for that matter “feeble-minded”?
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Criminal Code of Canada Section 149 Indecent Assault on FemaleBanging your daughter gets you up to 14 years and a whipping. Banging your step-daughter / foster-daughter or a female ward gets you at most two years with no whipping.
From my experience, there were a lot of stepfamilies on base. How many times acts contrary to section 153 were committed on base is again anyone’s guess.
Buggery could also apply to hetrosexuals as well. Buggery is the old-timey word for anal intercourse. Section 158 allowed for a husband and wife to engage in buggery. Section 158 also allowed any 2 persons whom were both over the age of 21 to engage in buggery. The off thing with buggery is that there really wasn’t a victim, both parties were guilty.
Regina vs. Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan.
or how the CMAC straight up said that the Canadian Forces could conduct service tribunals for some forms of gross indecency.
Donald Joseph Sullivan was recently just convicted for crimes against numerous children that he committed during the 1970s when he was a boy scout leader in Ottawa area of Ontario. For some reason, the police never busted his ass in the ’70s. Donald disappeared from the Ottawa area and fell off the radar of the police for some reason.
The reason that Donald Joseph Sullivan fell of the radar of the Ottawa police in the ’70s is that he joined the Canadian Armed Forces. Donald went on to have some involvement with the Catholic church on CFB Gagetown, and that’s where he met most of his teenaged victims.
1986 Court Martial Appeal Court ruling Regina vs. Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan.
The above section is from the Court Martial Appeal Court ruling when Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan appealed his courts martial sentence for molesting four boys all over the age of consent on Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, in New Brunswick. One of Mr. Sullivan’s arguements was whether or not the Canadian Forces had the right to conduct a service tribunal for the crimes of “Gross Indecency”.
The finding of the CMAC explains how the Canadian Forces could conduct a service tribunal for sexual crimes involving children
Gross Indecency is an interesting charge. There is no clear definition of what Gross Indecency is other than it typically referred to any type of sexual relations between two males that did not involve Buggery. Rarely was the charge of Gross Indecency ever used in any type of heterosexual encounter. Gross Indecency included: Masturbation of the other person; Oral Sex; Kissing; Fondling.
The Age of Consent.
As the CMAC ruling in the Regina vs. Donald Joseph Sullivan matter shows, the appearance of consent determined whether or not the Canadian Armed Forces could conduct a service tribunal for sexual assaults against children.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter C-34 Criminal Code Section 140 Consent to Sexual Acts.
Consent.
As section 140 of the Criminal Code of Canada stated, a person under the age of 14 cannot consent to sexual relations. Section 146 is “Sexual intercourse with female under fourteen”; Section 149 is “Indecent Assault on Female”; Section 156 is “Indecent Assault on Male”
What is “Indecent Assault”? Believe it or not, but just like Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault isn’t clearly defined in the Criminal Code. Best examples I can think of would be touching someone’s genitals without their consent, rubbing against someone for sexual gratification, groping someone for sexual gratification, of just plain touching anyone anywhere on their body in a sexual manner.
One thing that I’ve learnt from the Captain Father Angus McRae matter is that the “brass” reduced the number of charges brought against Captain McRae to only the charges involving P.S. who was apparently the only victim at the time who was over the age of 14 at the time of the CFSIU investigation of Captain McRae. The other victims of Captain McRae, F.A., and S.O., were 13 years of age when McRae was investigated by Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham of the CFSIU.
The CMAC ruling in the Donald Joseph Sullivan matter makes it very clear as to why the Canadian Forces would have dropped all of the charges against Captain McRae except for the charges related to P.S..
If the Canadian Forces had insisted on charging Captain McRae with crimes that he had committed against children under the age of 14, the Canadian Forces would have lost the right to have conducted a service tribunal. And by losing the right to have conducted a service tribunal, Captain McRae’s exploits would have been dealt with in the public courts where the Canadian Forces wouldn’t have been able to”throw a wall of secrecy” around the proceedings.
What, oh what were they hiding? Oh yeah, 25 children molested on a military base by an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Even in the matter of Regina vs. Donald Joseph Sullivan, all of the boys he was charged with molesting are all 14 years of age and older. You’re telling me that there were no boys under the age of 14 on CFB Gagetown? Was Mr. Sullivan checking birth certificates to ensure that he wasn’t messing around with a 12 year old or even an older looking 11 year old?
I don’t know about you, but I’m really kinda curious to know how many times the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence limited charges to those involving only children above the age of consent to ensure that these matters were dealt with in a service tribunal as opposed to in the civilian justice system.
I submitted an Freedom of Information request with the Department of National Defence in July of 2018. I was looking for “copies of any reports, memos, letters, emails, or any other documents and communications indicating how many cases of child sexual abuse occurred pre-1998 and were brought to the attention of the CFNIS / MP / CFPM post 1998 and declined prosecution due to the 3-year time bar which existed pre-1998”
In August of 2018, DND responded to me that (a) their record keeping system was limited in its functionality, and (b) creating a tally of these crimes would be “creating new documents” which runs counter to the ATIP Act.
The above email reached me prior to the official letter which is below.
Two things are learnt from the above letter. The first being that the military police record keeping system was much different prior to 2002 than it is now. Second, the Access to Information office won’t “create new documents’, and by that they mean if they go through the records as they exist prior to 2002 and created a spread sheet to track what charges there were for child sexual assaults, this would be considered to be the creation of new documents. And due to how records were maintained prior to 2002, creating a new tally sheet would be the only way to meaningfully count the number of sexual assaults in question.
The Information Commissioner of Canada did get involved and DND did finally agree to release some information to me.
On January 2nd, 2020 I recevied my response from DND.
The letter that accompanied the DVD explained that DND has released to me the information that I have requested, but only from the period of 2001 to current day as the Canadian Forces Military Police crime database does not go back prior to the year 2000.
This letter also explained that there is no data available for the years of 1998 to 2000. When DND says they never had a problem with child sexual abuse on the bases, they can say it with a straight face as they have no data due to piss-poor record keeping.
DND also explained that the information is “Invalidated raw data”. Whatever that means.
Between 2001 to 2019 there were 2,804 sexual assaults reported to the Canadian Forces Military Police.
In 782 of the cases, charges were recommended. One thing to remember is that these cases only resulted in charges, there’s nothing to indicate if a conviction resulted due to the charges.
From page 70 of the “External Review into Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces” which was conducted by retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Madame Marie Deschamps.
881 cases were closed as being “Founded Not Cleared”
171 cases were subject to “Departmental Discretion”. I’m still waiting for an explanation for this one.
52 cases were investigations for sexual crimes involving children. The fact that these cases are being investigated by the CFNIS means that Lt. Gen. Christine Whitecross wasn’t stating the facts before the Defence Committee when Randall Garrison asked her who had the jurisdiction for child sexual assault investigations on Canadian Forces Bases in Canada. The response from Lt. Gen. Christine Whitecross was that matters involving children are always handed off to the outside civilian authorities. This would be a very similar response to what I was told by Lt. Col. David Antonyshyn of the Office of the Judge Advocate General.
However, one thing became very apparent while I was reading this data set.
This data set is only for “Sexual Assault”.
Sexual assault is a very specific charge under the Criminal Code of Canada.
So, I filed off another Access to Information request.
One of the key elements of the criminal justice system in this country is that a person being charged with a criminal code offence has to be charged under the criminal code that was in place at the time the alleged offence occurred.
If someone sexually assaulted a child in 1981, and they were investigated today, they would have to be charged under the 1970 Revised Statutes of Canada, Chapter C-34, Criminal Code.
If someone sexually assaulted a child in 1986, and they were investigated today, they would have to be charged under the 1985 Revised Statutes of Canada, Chapter C-46, Criminal Code.
Sexual assault as a charge did not exist prior to 1985. Prior to 1985 sexual assaults against female children were usually dealt with by Sections 146, 148, 149, 150, 153, 155, and 157. Sections 143 and 145 were rarely used when female children were sexually assaulted. When male children were sexually assaulted, the charges used were usually Sections 155, 156, and 157.
With the new Criminal Code, rape was removed, so there were no longer charges specific to the victim’s gender.
From 1985 onward, persons who sexually assaulted children were usually charged with Section 151, 152, 153, and sometimes Section 159.
Sexual assault in regard to adults is usually dealt with in the 1985 Criminal Code under Section 271, 272, and 273.
We’ll have to wait and see what DND’s response is to my latest request.
Seeing as how Richard died back in January of 2017, we’ll never get to know the truth about his interview with the CFNIS on June 9th 2011.
This interview was conducted with Sgt. Cyr of the CFNIS. Yes, the same Sgt. Cyr who claimed that he flew down from Edmonton, AB and met with me in Victoria, BC.
Yes, the same Sgt. Cyr that couldn’t remember asking me if I knew anything about Captain Father Angus McRae being arrested for molesting children on CFB Namao.
Yes, the same Sgt. Cyr that failed to mention anything about my emails that detailed my visits to the chapel with P.S. to see Captain McRae.
Yes, the same Sgt. Cyr that told me that P.S. was 13 years old when he was caught buggering me in the spring of 1980.
Yes, the same Sgt. Cyr that told me that the church that I indicated to him in an email was a brand new church on the base and that the church that was on the base when I lived there was in a completely different location.
We know that Sgt. Cyr plays fast and loose with the truth.
Richard however also had his own versions of the truth as well.
And as I’ve learnt over the last few years, even if the investigator doesn’t actually have bad intentions, a bad “hunch” can cause the investigator to come down with a case of “tunnel vision” which is sure to run even the best cases off the rails. Take for example the case of “Marie Adler” from Lynnwood, Washington. She had been raped at gunpoint in her apartment. But the police right from the word go latched on to little trivial inconsistencies in her statement. The police also put far too much weight on the personal opinions of her foster parents. The police intimidated “Marie” to the point that she recanted her statement and agreed with the police that she had made the entire story up. The police ended up charging Marie with making a false report. She was fined by the city of Lynnwood and sentenced to probation. The only problem for the police was that about three years later, as the result of an investigation into a string of sexual assaults in another state, the FBI uncovered pictures of “Marie” that had been taken while she was being raped. The pictures pretty well matched what she had said in her initial statements to the police. The city of Lynnwood settled with her for $150k. Her lawyer suggested they could get more. But all she wanted was the apology and $150k was enough for her to get away from Lynnwood and to start over someplace else.
I’m probably cutting the CFNIS too much slack on this. After all, the CFNIS were bound and determined right from the start to not allow the connection between P.S. and Captain Father Angus McRae to be noted anywhere in the official investigation.
Was Richard taken out for a coffee and donut before he gave his statement to the CFNIS? You know, just so that Richard could be made to understand how I obviously had an agenda to screw the military over for money, and that it would be great if Richard could help set things straight for them.
According to the CFNIS “Pre-Charge Screening Report” this is what my father told Sgt. Cyr during his interview.
This is pretty well the same paragraph contained in the tribunal records that were submitted to me.
Actually, here is my father’s entire statement to the CFNIS:
Item (a) When Richard was posted to Edmonton in 1978, we resided on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980. We then moved from CFB Namao in October of 1980 and arrived at CFB Greisbach. I can only wonder if it was Richard or if it was Cyr that intentionally stayed away from using the name CFB Namao. CFB Edmonton was comprised of two separate bases. CFB Namao was the air force base, and CFB Greisbach was the army base. CFB Namao was also where P.S. resided and where Captain Father Angus McRae resided. CFB Namao was not called CFB Edmonton, nor was CFB Greisbach called CFB Edmonton. CFB Edmonton was used for referring to both bases, but each base retained its individual name. Make sense? Thought so. But yes, the fact that CFB Namao was not mentioned in my father’s statement struck me as odd.
This is our telephone listing from the 1979 Ed Tel phone book. Lancaster Park was on CFB Namao, not CFB Greisbach This is our telephone listing from the 1980 Ed Tel phone book This is out telephone listing from the 1981 Ed Tel phone book. PMQ #70 – 10215 – 138 Ave was on CFB Greisbach.
Item (c) I talked to my father in August of 2006 about the babysitter. My father knew the babysitter’s name. My father at the time pleaded for me to understand that it wasn’t his fault that the babysitter was looking after my brother and I. My father pleaded with me to understand that the babysitter had been hired by our grandmother. Therefore it was grandma’s fault obviously. Richard said that he had warned his mother about the babysitter, but she wouldn’t listen to him.
Item (g) Grandma came to live with us at CFB Summerside in PEI. Her and her husband, Andy Anderson, moved into the PMQ on CFB Namao when we moved there in the summer of 1978. Andy Anderson was my father’s step father. Andy didn’t die until sometime early 1985. Andy Anderson, due to a slip and fall in the bathtub, was hospitalized from winter of 1978 until his death in 1985. The long bus trips into the city is why Grandma would hire P.S. as our babysitter when she went to visit Andy in the nursing home. Grandma lived with us from 1978 until 1981. We stayed with grandma in Edmonton over the summer of 1984 and 1985. After Andy died in 1985 we never went to see grandma again. But then again she died in early 1986.
Richard’s actual father lived in Oshawa, Ontario. We visited him for Christmas of 1982. I don’t know when Richard’s father died, as Richard and his father had a very icy relationship. Even when we moved to CFB Downsview in 1983 we never went to see Richard’s father in Oshawa. We would frequently visit Sue’s parents and brothers in Oshawa. We’d often go shopping for groceries at Knob Hill Farms in Oshawa. But other than the visit at Christmas in 1982, we never did go visit Richard’s father again. And to be clear, Richard’s father only lived about 10 blocks away from Sue’s parents.
If I had to hazard a guess, there was no “neighbour” across the street on CFB Namao. Why would we need a neighbour when our grandma was living with us? And what neighbour is going to “keep an eye” on his kids when Richard goes away on a six week training exercise to the arctic? The million dollar question is, did Richard imagine this woman across the street, or was it suggested to Richard that it would help if he remembered the babysitter as NOT having looked after my brother and I. Remember, the CF up to this point had actively been scrubbing any mention of Captain McRae from the investigation.
Item (g). So far as Richard and any of my school teachers went, he ignored them for the most part. Mr. Bowles, my grade 8 science teacher wanted me to enter my 5mW helium-neon laser into the National Science Fair in Ottawa. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get hold of my father. Mr. Ford, my grade 8 and grade 9 music teacher, wanted to get me enrolled in a extracurricular program for electronics and computers in music. Mr. Ford couldn’t get hold of my father. Mrs. Donskov, my grade 7 music teacher wanted me to play the bass guitar so badly that she even arranged for me to be able to borrow one of the school’s amplifiers and one of the bass guitars. She drove me home, and as expected, Richard blew up at her and threatened to call the military police on her if she ever stepped foot on base again. Mr. Snyder the computer lab teacher at Elia Jr. High suggested that I get either a Commodore 64 or an Apple IIe for home use so that I could join one of the local computer clubs and hang out with the other kids that were interested in computers. Richard had his own ideas about that.
And besides, as the few items below indicate, Richard had a very acrimonious relationship with our school teachers.
In 1980 Richard Gill thought that there was nothing wrong with his kids.In 1983 Richard Gill was of the opinion that there was nothing wrong with his kids.Jan 28th, 1983 The school and my counselors are apparently harassing poor Richard.Richard really didn’t like my civilian child care worker apparently.
Item (i) So much wrong with this paragraph. I got cut off by a cabbie that ran a stop sign. ICBC found the cab driver 100% at fault. ICBC rebuilt my motorcycle and paid for all new riding gear. ICBC even paid for a rental vehicle while my motorcycle was being repaired. Yes, I seized the engine in the Plymouth Horizon. No, my mother never paid for it. I bought a used engine from West Edmonton Pick-a-Part and swapped the engines over the course of a weekend. The engine was $150.00. All the sundry parts were maybe another $150.00. This was in early November of 1990 so I was still living mostly off the money I made at Canshare Cabling in Toronto. The long drive from Wabamum into Edmonton is what convinced me to rent an apartment for December 1st 1990.
Item (j). Since moving out on my own in 1987, I’ve never asked for nor have I received a single nickle from my father. He invited me to move to Edmonton with him in June of 1990 just after I finished the Canshare Cabling job. As I was flush with cash (over $20k) I paid for my way and a little more during the trip. I bought my car, bought a year’s worth of insurance, and rented an apartment, with my own money. Through the good and bad I’d never turn to Richard for money as I knew that I’d never get it. I learnt well as a child to never ask him for money as he’d promise it to you if you did some chore like mowing the lawn, but then he’d renege on paying by finding some trivial fault.
As a kid, my father would quite often promise things and then never have any intention whatsoever of following through with them. Birthdays, driver’s training, attending award ceremonies, etc. And he always had a handy excuse available. So yeah, you just learnt to not rely on Richard.
Item (k) Richard was full aware of what I changed my name to. I sent him a very detailed and concise explanation as to why I wanted to change my name and what I was changing it to and why I specifically chose the names that I did.
Item (l) Richard didn’t ask me for a proper reason in 2006. He knew of the abuse, he just didn’t know how bad it had been. He wanted to know why I let the babysitter abuse my younger brother. I had to remind him of how old I was, how old the babysitter was, and the fact that both he and his mother were usually either angry or drunk. In 2006 this just elicited silence from him and a bit of a mumble apology.
By August of 2011, the CFNIS had been given a copy of my Alberta Social Service and foster care records, which had this to say about my grandmother and her position in my family.
Mr. Gill’s mother was Margret Anderson (nee) WiniandyRichard said that apparently grandma hid problems from him.Grandma a threat – authoritarian and oppressive. Grandma moved out of our house in the spring /summer of 1981
Grandma was a bit of a mixed bag. She had been through Indian Residential school as a child. One of the more notorious ones. Holy Angels in Fort Chipewyan. She lived by the maxims of “Children are to speak only when spoken to” and “Children are to be seen and not heard”. She had a very strong affinity for the church. She had a short temper and was not afraid to use corporal punishment. She drank a lot. When she was drunk she was a “happy drunk”.
I wonder what it is they’re trying to say here?Intake form from November 1981.
In the winter of 1983 I stopped going to school. At the time my father said that I had been expelled because I wouldn’t stop kissing other boys. In August of 2011 I learnt that I stopped going to school because Alberta Social Services was on the verge of removing me from the home due to my father’s non-compliance with counselling.
In the spring of 1983 just after we started on the drive to Canadian Forces Base Downsview from Canadian Forces Base Greisbach, Richard said that the reason we had to move suddenly was that he was saving me from the drugs the counselors wanted to give to me to stop me from kissing other boys. Again, another lie. From reading the paperwork from Alberta Social Services they had absolutely no concern about my apparent sexual orientation. Their concern was my home life and my father’s inability to look after his family. The only two people that had a hang up on my sexual orientation, imagined or otherwise, were Captain Terry Totzke and my father.
When I spoke to Fred Cunningham back on November 27th, 2011 he said that the base military police tried to call in the RCMP to deal with P.S., but the the “brass” wouldn’t allow for that.
If you remember from my earlier posts, unlike what Lt. Col. Gilles Sansterre tried telling me in January of 2012, Fred Cunningham wasn’t just some schmuck telling me incorrect 2nd hand news. Warrant Officer Fred R. Cunningham was the acting section commander of the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit at CFB Edmonton, and as I would learn from CFSIU investigation report DS-120-10-80, W/O Cunningham had been not only tasked by the base security officer, Captain David Pilling, with investigating Captain McRae, W/O Cunningham had also been involved in the interrogation and arrest of Captain McRae.
From Access to Information Request A-2016-02434 From Access to Information Request A-2016-02434From Access to Information Request A-2016-02434 This investigation was triggered by the base military police investigation of P.S. for his actions with young children on the base.
Both Fred Cunningham in 2011 and J.S. in 2015 stated that the whole investigation into Captain McRae came about because of the base military police being alerted to the fact that P.S. was having sex with young children on the base and that other parents had complained.
I have established that P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. This was verified by an RCMP officer as well as two newspaper articles. One newspaper article was from August 1985 which said that P.S. was 20 years old. Another newspaper article from February 2015 stated that P.S. was 49 years old. If his birthday is in June of the year, both of those ages work out with 1965 being his birth year.
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, P.S. would have been criminally liable for any criminal code offence that he committed as of the day of his 14th birthday. Remember how desperate Sgt. Christian Cyr was to get me to believe that P.S. was only 13 when he was found buggering me in the spring of 1980? That wasn’t accidental. Anyone who hadn’t yet attained the day of their 14th birthday could not be held criminally responsible for their criminal code offences.
Why did the “brass” not want the base military police calling in the RCMP to deal with P.S.? It wasn’t because they felt sorry for P.S.. It was something much more devious and sinister.
Back when I started on this journey in 2012 I thought that it was possible that P.S. never got in trouble becuase his father had rank. And by rank I mean captain and above. As it turns out, J.S. was only a Sgt.in 1980. That wasn’t nearly high enough to get much in the way of a favour out of the chain of command.
All that J.S. being a Sgt in 1980 meant is that when P.S. beat me up behind the rec centre in the spring of 1980 and told me that his father outranked my father and that if I told anyone about what P.S. had done to me sexually that his father would have mine thrown out of the military, he wasn’t completely full of bluster. I’m sure that Sgt. J.S. could have caused problems for Cpl. Gill if he wanted too.
The Canadian Forces had a problem on their hands. And they wanted it to go away with as little public knowledge as possible.
Captain McRae was apparently the first person with an officer’s rank in the military that had been convicted of “homosexual acts” with children. Think about that for a minute. We’re not talking about some lowly corporal who had sex with the neighbour’s 13-year old daughter while he was drunk. No. We’re talking about a Captain molesting over 25 male children on a secure defence establishment.
You can bet your bottom dollar that NDHQ in Ottawa was calling the shots and was deciding what would happen.
From Access to Information Request A-2016-02434 This is on literally the 2nd page of the Captain McRae investigation file.
The Canadian Forces had three reasons in the National Defence Act that would allow them to move a courts martial “in-camera” and out of the public eye.
Section 157 of the 1970 National Defence Act which was in power until 1985
Reason 1: Public Safety. Reason 2: Defence. Reason 3: Public Morals.
None of these reasons involve protecting the identities of the children. As can be seen from this snippet of Donald Joseph Sullivan’s CMAC appeal, the courts can easily protect the identities of the victims by simply removing all identifying information.
Names of the children have been excludedNames of the children have been excluded
So, what does this have to do with the “brass” not allowing the RCMP to be called in to deal with P.S.?
P.S. sure was guilty of many sexual immoralities such as buggery, gross indecency, indecent assault, kidnapping, forcible confinement, uttering threats.
If the RCMP had arrested and charged P.S. with molesting the number of children that he did, he would have been dealt with under the Juvenile Delinquents Act. This would have posed a very significant problem for the Canadian Forces and their goal of keeping the details of Captain McRae’s crimes out of the public eye.
And yes, the Criminal Code of Canada that was in force at the time said that those who had attained their 14th birthday could be convicted of an offence. It should also be noted that the prosecution of children under the age of 14 wasn’t impossible, just the prosecution had to prove that the child was “competent to know the nature and consequences of his conduct and to appreciate that it was wrong”.
Chapter C-34 Criminal Code of Canada This is why Sgt. Cyr was so desperate in his attempts on May 3rd, 2011 to get me to believe that P.S. was 13 years old when he had been caught buggering me in the spring of 1980. P.S. was in fact just weeks away from his 15th birthday.
Section 33 of the Juvenile Delinquents Act makes it a crime for any adult to contribute to the delinquency of a minor.
The adult who was responsible for the delinquency of a minor could be fined and sentenced by the Juvenile courts. This in turn meant that any details that didn’t directly identfy P.S. could be made public. And this is specifically what DND didn’t want. The Canadian Forces and DND wanted none of this to be made public.
The Juvenile Delinquents Act only required the name and other means of identifying the child be withheld from publication.
The media could have easily published Captain McRae’s name and the fact that he had used a boy that was of 14 years of age to bring children to him to be molested so long as the name of the child was not made public and the place where the child lived was not made public. This would have been a nightmare for the Canadian Armed Forces
The Canadian Forces would have been pilloried in the eye of the public had the press learnt that a 50 something year old officer in the Canadian Armed Forces was not only committing “homosexual acts” with boys as young as 6 on the base, the public would have been equally appalled to learn that Captain McRae had been “training” P.S. in the fine art of child molestation.
And then there’s the whole question of the “working” relationship between P.S. and Captain McRae. I can clearly remember 5 different visits in which P.S. took me over to the base chapel to see Captain McRae, or ‘father’ as my grandmother would allow me to call him. These visits always occurred on days when P.S. wasn’t babysitting. P.S. would usually find me playing somewhere on base and insist that I come to the chapel with him. On one of these occasions, I had been with my father as my father worked on his motorcycle at the storage unit by the telephone exchange.
P.S. came right up to my father asked my father if my father wanted P.S. to look after me. My father told me to go with P.S. on this visit.
I just thought of something as I typed this. Is this why Richard feigned ignorance about P.S. whenever anyone asked him about what happened on CFB Namao?
When the whole Captain Father Angus McRae fiasco blew up in June of 1980, did my father realize what he had done?
This would have been quite the thing to admit, that you sent your own son over to visit with a kiddie diddler. It would have been very hard for my father to have not known about this. CFB Namao was an isolated community north of Edmonton. 25 children had been molested by McRae. An untold number of children had been molested by P.S.. P.S. getting caught molesting children is what triggered the investigation into McRae. Everyone on that base would have known something.
The visits to McRae were almost identical. We’d play board games for a short while. We might watch some TV or listen to some records. Then Captain McRae would tell P.S. to get the grape juice. That’s what he called it, “grape juice”. I always remember it as being really sickly sweet. Sickly sweet grape juice. Almost like really sweet cough medicine. I never remember anything after this. I always remember becoming “aware” at other places on the base, usually the rec centre. On one of these occasions somebody called my grandmother to come and get me. She was furious. She wanted me to tell her who the kids were that gave me the alcohol. I was terrified. If you ever saw my grandmother in one of her rages, you’d understand. She then accused me of stealing her booze. She must have counted her flats of beer and her empties a few times before she realized that I didn’t take her beer.
In a way I’m thankful for the “grape juice” or as James Paluck informed me, the “Manischewitz wine”. I can’t honestly remember anything from the visits to the chapel and what occurred after the wine. I know I had rectal bleeding back then, and I had always assumed that was from P.S.. But yeah, I’d have to be pretty fucking naive to think that nothing was occurring in the rectory attached to the chapel when I was in the presence of two prolific kiddie diddlers.
I remember a good dozen times in the year and a half that P.S. was our babysitter in which he abused me and my brother together down in the basement on our uncle Doug’s cot. P.S. wasn’t subtle in his abuse either. He could get quite physical. I guess he was taking everything that Captain McRae was doing to him out on us. He almost always molested my brother and I together as it was easier for him to keep an eye on the two of us least one of us go off and babble to someone else about what P.S. was doing. P.S. loved digital penetration. I know he attempted anal with me a few times and actually succeeded on the day we were caught in his bedroom.
I saw P.S. have intercourse with a girl younger than I was. All I really remember about her is she wore a white dress, and had blond hair in pig tails. I would have been between 7 and 8 at the time. P.S. would have been older than his 14th birthday. P.S. had her over by the curling club and the Canex. She really didn’t want to be there. I wasn’t with P.S. that day. It was summer time. I think I was heading over to the arena for who knows what reasons. They were behind the Canex building towards the arena. She screamed. I still cringe thinking about that. There were four other boys I was aware of that P.S. abused. I didn’t know them that well. One kid left the base in the summer of 1979. I don’t know where his father was posted to. One of the other boys arrived in the summer of 1979. One of the other boys were long term on that base. All I remember about this last boy is that he was in my Red Cross swimming classes at the base pool. My family was punted off that base in October of 1980. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember their names.
And Captain McRae wasn’t the only adult that P.S. was involved with on CFB Namao. As I described to Sgt. Tenaschuk during the 2015 to 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754, P.S. had cornered me at one of the public swims at the base pool. P.S. directed me into the sauna. There was an older man in the sauna sitting at the far end. P.S. escorted me over and told this man what my name was. This older man smiled at me and he put his hand on my shoulder and said that I was really cute. He asked me if I knew how to give a good blow job. P.S. replied that I was a really good. P.S. then went over and stood watch at the door. All I really remember about this old guy is he was a little on the pudgy side and he had a very close shaved white beard. I gave this man the blow job he wanted. As I’m typing this, I’m actually amazed at how many blowjobs I gave out on that base.
Guy with white beard = 1; P.S. = alot; Captain McRae = only P.S. would know.
Another former dependant from CFB Namao contacted me in the summer of 2012. James had his own list of names of children that P.S. had abused.
So, it’s quite clear that we’re not talking about P.S. inappropriately touching a single kid out of “childhood curiosity and experimentation”. He had access to numerous children under the age of 10 on that base. P.S. definitely should have been prosecuted. He would have probably received the help that he so desperately needed. But, I digress.
From what both retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham and Sgt. J.S. have stated, there were well over 25 children from CFB Namao that were caught up in the McRae / P.S. affair. I spoke to the younger brother of a trio of boys from the same family. Two boys were in the Canadian Forces later in life. The eldest boy never joined. The eldest boy killed himself just a few years ago. The younger brother blames the sexual abuse on CFB Namao and their dealings with the military social worker when their family was posted to CFB Borden in Ontario. I’m just wondering how many other kids involved with the Captain McRae child sex scandal from CFB Namao committed suicide or had lingering problems not only from the abuse but from the manner in which the military dealt with the victims.
P.S. is the complainant. The other two would seem to be victims of McRaeThree more victims of McRae, possibly 6 but I can’t say for sure about the last 3
6 – 9 is far short of 25. But you have to realize that Captain McRae was being investigated for “Acts of Homosexuality” by the dread CFSIU. The CFSIU were responsible for enforcing CFAO 19-20
Yes, CFAO 19-20 did not apply to military dependants, but it did shape the military’s attitude towards what it believed to be homosexual acts. And homosexual acts were considered to be victimless crimes, meaning BOTH parties were just as culpable.
If you were a service member of the Canadian Armed Forces in 1980, would you want it to be known that your son was participating in “Acts of Homosexuality”? Nope, didn’t think so. So, I think a lot of serving parents wouldn’t let their kids be interviewed by the CFSIU out of fear of their sons being listed as being engaged in homosexual behaviour.
So, back to the question posed at the start of this post.
Q: Why weren’t the Queen’s Cowboys called in?
A: Fear of the public discovering that DND and the CF couldn’t protect children living on the bases in Canada.
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.
For legal reasons, I have to blank out the name of my abuser.
P.S. had numerous convictions from 1985 until 2000 for various crimes including sexual assaults. His records are easily available though CPIC
excerpt from the MPCC review of GO 2011-5754
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.
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 werefourteen or fifteen years of age and one was eighteen years of age. The appellant had met the boys through his position as aninstructor of altar boys at the Base Roman Catholic Chapel and through his position as a counsellor in social youth organizationsin a town nearby the Base. The four younger boys were children of service personnel stationed on the Base. The offences tookplace 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 thattime the boy would go to the appellant’s residence twice each week. On the particular occasion, after the boy arrived at theappellant’s residence, he was given alcoholic beverages and was shown a pornographic movie. At the appellant’s suggestion theboy changed into his gym shorts and subsequently removed all of his clothing after which the appellant encouraged the boy tomasturbate 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 itshould not have done so having regard to recent changes in the National Defence Act with respect to jurisdiction which are theresult 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. Thesection 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, theformer offence of indecent assault against females and against males by either a male or a female. But the offence of grossindecency is not an included offence in sexual assault nor is sexual assault an included offence in gross indecency. An importantdistinction between the two offences is that the absence of the consent by the victim to the act is an element of the offenceof sexual assault but is not an element of the offence of gross indecency. Counsel submits that the change which prohibitsprosecution of a broad range of sexual offences should be regarded by us as a policy against prosecution by a service tribunalof other offences of a sexual nature in favour of prosecution in the criminal courts of the land. The short answer to this is thatParliament has not disturbed the jurisdiction to prosecute some acts of gross indecency. The jurisdiction in relation to theseacts 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 notdisturbed 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 quarterson the base against the children of service personnel who lived there. The case had all of the elements present in Belford. Itoffended 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.
I’ll post a copy of the email I received from the Office of the Information Commissioner.
SAMPIS does not have searchable fields that would give the age of the victims. This is what DND itself has told the OIC. DND has also told the OIC that records outside of the SAMPIS system cannot be searched.
In the final report of the Fynes Public Interest Hearing, the Military Police Complaints Commission voiced numerous concerns about SAMPIS. SAMPIS does not retain a history of changes made to documents contained within the SAMPIS system. General Occurrence reports can be re-written and no history will remain of what was added, removed, or amended to the GO report. Article 636 from the Final Report of the Fynes Public Interest Hearing: ” The hearing revealed that, once created, SAMPIS entries can be, and routinely are, reviewed and edited by investigators and their supervisors. This is of particular importance as SAMPIS does not retain a history of changes made to a document. It saves only the latest version”
Now, so far as the CFNIS investigating historical child sexual abuse that occurred prior to 1998. This would be a legal impossibility. Prior to 1998, a service tribunal had to be commenced against an accused no more than three years after the date of the alleged service offence. This time bar was removed in 1998. Service offences included all criminal code matters. But certain offences had to be prosecuted through the Civilian courts.
Murder, manslaughter, and rape had to be prosecuted through the civilian courts prior to 1985.
After rape was removed from the Criminal Code in 1985 murder, manslaughter, and sexual assault had to be prosecuted through the civilian courts.
In 1998, the National Defence Act was amended and Murder, Manslaughter, and kidnapping are now the crimes that have to be prosecuted through the civilian courts.
It should be noted that rape was never a crime that could have ever applied to males. The Criminal Code was very specific that rape could only apply to females. This is how the Canadian Forces had a court martial for Captain Father Angus McRae in July of 1980 for the crimes of “gross indecency”, “Indecent assault”, and “buggery”. Also, in most cases, not every sexual assault of a female child resulted in rape charges. Indecent assault and gross indecency were the preferred charges. prior to 1985.
Anyways, back to the 3 year time bar.
Any former retired member of the Canadian Forces who was suspected of committing the crimes of “gross indecency”, “Indecent assault”, and “buggery” prior to 1985 would have their matter dealt with via a service tribunal as these were not excluded offences. This means that these crimes could never be prosecuted in the modern day as they would have to be prosecuted through the military justice system and more than 3-years have lapsed between the date of the offence and the resultant service tribunal.
The time period of 1985 until 1998 is a murky period as the Canadian Forces couldn’t conduct a service tribunal for the criminal code charge of sexual assault (271 – 272), but they could conduct a service tribunal for the criminal code charges of 151, 152, 173(2).
It should be noted that the criminal code of Canada has no such limitations on indictable offences and this is why you hear of civilian cases going to court where some 80 year old pervert, who was a hockey coach or a school janitor, molested kids back in the 60s.
Now, it also should be remembered that prior to November of 1997, the commanding officer of the accused was required to conduct a summary investigation AFTER the military police or the CFSIU laid charges against their subordinate. The flaw with this was that the commanding officer could dismiss any charge brought against their subordinate whether or not the commanding officer would have had the authority to try the accused on the charge. This means that prior to November of 1997, commanding officers could dismiss charges brought against their subordinates that would have had to have gone either to court martial or to the civilian courts.
Jurisdiction is another weird issue that changes more often than the weather. In 2011, the CFNIS took the investigation of my complaint of sexual assault at the hands of another military dependant away from the civilian police. I was 7, the accused was months shy of his 15th birthday. The Juvenile Delinquents Act made the accused culpable for any criminal code offence he committed as of the day of his 14th birthday. And there were a lot of offences.
In 2017 I made a complaint to the CFNIS related to some sexual assaults I endured at the hands of a commissionaire at the Denison Armouries in Toronto when I was in cadets. The Denison Armouries were a defence establishment, the commissionaire worked for the Canadian Corp of Commissionaires. The CFNIS in Borden handed this matter over to the Toronto Police Service. The TPS was able to lay six charges of sexual assault against Earl within a month of the TPS being given the case.
I can’t figure out what the criteria is for CFNIS claiming investigative jurisdiction and what the criteria is for the CFNIS to cede investigative jurisdiction. As I said, it seems to change more often than the weather.
The Catholic chapels on many of the bases in Canada had rectories attached for the padre to reside in.
Blueprints for “Our Lady of Loretto Chapel – Canadian Forces Base Namao” These plans were used on most other bases as well
Most of these rectories were systematically removed in the late 1980s to early 1990s.
Instructions for removing the bathtub from the rectory and for removing the kitchen partition walls New layout for former living quarters now re-purposed as worship and absolution areas.
It’s anyone’s guess really as to why the Canadian Armed Forces started to remove the rectories, but I have a guess or two that probably aren’t far from what the true answer actually is.
I think the Canadian Armed Forces were beginning to realize in the ’80s that they were having a problem with the chaplins. It’s no secret that it was during the ’80s that the public started to become aware of the problems facing the Catholic Church and their priests that had a fondness for children. And all of the military chaplains were supplied by the Catholic church.
This was such a known problem that the Catholic Church even had a recycling facility where they would send the Catholic priests to help them with their issues after they had been found to be sexually involved with children.
In 2006 the Canadian Armed Forces changed the procedure for obtaining baptismal records. In their explanation, they specifically cite the number of lawsuits brought against the various civilian diocese across Canada as being the primary reason for the change in procedure.
If you ask me, I think the reason for this change is to make civil actions against the Canadian Forces for the actions of their kiddie diddling clergy that much harder. If you can’t prove that you were baptised, then how could you have been involved with the padre. I know I was baptised as my grandmother had me take my first communion on CFB Namao at Our Lady of Loretto Chapel. Captain McRae would have been the padre.
When Captain Father Angus McRae was being investigated by the CFSIU for having committed “acts of homosexuality” with teenage boys on CFB Namao, Major Roger Bazin had been sent out from Ottawa to assist Captain McRae with his affairs.
Major Roger Bazin was once a padre on Canadian Forces Base Borden in the 1970s. We know for sure that Captain Roger Bazin was on CFB Borden in 1972. Major Roger Bazin would go on to become Brigadier General Roger Bazin and he would become the head of the chaplaincy branch of the Canadian Forces.
Just before the time of the Colonel Russell Williams fiasco on Canadian Forces Base Trenton a man came forward and made a complaint against Roger Bazin. The complaint was that Roger Bazin had sexually abused this man when he was a child living on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1972.
Bazin was investigated and charged, but the charges were dropped at the last minute. I think the three year time bar played a significant role in the dropping of charges. As Bazin was subject to the Code of Service Discipline at the time of the abuse, and as he had committed the service offences of Buggery, Gross Indecency, and Indecent Assault, these were crimes that could be prosecuted through a court martial (see the court martial of Captain McRae, July 18th, 1980 CM62).
However, as previously discussed, the three year time bar that existed in the pre-1998 National Defence Act meant that the court martial had to occur within 3 years of the date of the offence. As more than 3 years had elapsed, there is no possibility that charges could proceed.
And no, there exists no mechanism to kick these matters over to the civilian courts to get around the 3 year time bar.
Now, this isn’t the first time a complaint had been brought against Roger Bazin.
After Roger Bazin had retired from the Canadian Forces, he became a chaplain in a small parish in Ontario. A boy from that parish came forward with complaints against Bazin. The church convinced the parents of the boy to not bring the police in. Bazin made a cash settlement with the boy, and the matter simply went away.
So, what are the odds that Captain Father Angus McRae and Brigadier General Roger Bazin were the only two padres with a soft-spot for children?
Unlike the Catholic church, the Canadian Armed Forces have their own legal system. The Canadian Armed Forces can choose to deal with the wayward padres however they see fit.
I know that in the matter of Canadian Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae, the Canadian Forces were just as guilty of moving the predator padres around as the Catholic church was guilty of moving the predator priests around. In 1973, McRae was investigated for “acts of homosexuality” at RMC Kingston @ CFB Kingston. He was punted off to CFB Portage La Prairie. He was then punted off to Canadian Forces Station Holberg on Vancouver Island where he became involved with a teenage boy. He was then punted over to CFB Namao where in less than two years he was investigated for molesting over 25 children.
If the CFNIS were requested by the office of the Minister of National Defence to investigate the military padres during the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, what would they find? Would they have the required skills? What would the point be if charges couldn’t be brought due to the 3-year time bar? How would the Minister of National Defence find all of the former military dependants? What about the ones who committed suicide over the years?
Would the Minister of National Defence ever request this to be done with the knowledge that any evidence of wrongdoing would expose the office of the Minister of National Defence to civil actions much like when Mr. P.S. sued the office of the Minister of National Defence?
Would the Minister of National Defence ever allow this type of investigation to occur knowing full well that it would forever damage the image of the Canadian Armed Forces and probably lead Parliament to overhauling the military justice system.
How many time during the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, did other military dependants come forward with complaints against other military pardes for incidents of sexual assault, only to have charges not proceed due to the 3-year time bar.
How many times in the past did commanding officers dismiss charges that had been brought against the padres?
Remember, as in my case, the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal have a multitude of ways to cover-up the reason why charges didn’t go forward. In my case, Sgt. Christian Cyr intentionally told me that Mr. P.S. was only 13 years old in the spring of 1980 when Mr. P.S. had been discovered buggering me in his bedroom in his family’s PMQ . Sgt Cyr did this for a reason. Under the juvenile delinquents act, a person who had not yet achieved their 14th birthday could not be charged with a criminal offence.
However, Mr. P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. In May of 1980, Mr. P.S. would have been two months shy of his 15th birthday. Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act he would have been fully culpable for all of the criminal code offences that he committed since June 20th, 1979 while at the same time Captain McRae couldn’t be charged for any crime after May of 1983. (3-year time bar).
And in researching the CMAC records I’ve collected for this blog posting, I came across a CMAC finding that says that the Minister of National Defence functions as the Attorney General for the Canadian Armed Forces and maintains a supervisory role over military prosecutions. This means that the Minister of National Defence has some involvement in the military justice system. This serves to further my observations that a conflict of interest exists in allowing the CFNIS to investigate historical matters of child sexual abuse on the Defence Establishments when it is the office of the Minister of National Defence that would be subject to civil actions should convictions result.
Who ordered the charges against Captain McRae to be reduced?
I would find out in July of 2012 that Captain Father Angus McRae’s commanding officer was Colonel Dan Munro, the base commander of CFB Edmonton. Munro’s name is spelt without the “e”. Continue reading “Colonel Dan Munro…..”
In the aftermath of me having been found being buggered by the babysitter in his bedroom in the early spring of 1980, I became a social pariah on CFB Namao. I couldn’t even make it the distance between the babysitter’s family PMQ and my family PMQ without getting beaten up by about 5 or 6 of the teenaged boys that were in the group of 10 to 12 kids who appeared on the lawn of the babysitter’s family PMQ after someone discovered the two of us together in his bedroom.
Again, for the record, at the time I would have been 8 at the time, and the babysitter would have been just weeks shy of his 15th birthday.
And unlike what the Alberta Crown stated in November of 2011, a 14 year 11 month old boy having forced anal intercourse with an 8 year old boy is not a simple matter of “sexual curiosity and experimentation”.
From the office of the Alberta Crown Prosecutor The Crown couldn’t even be bothered to spell my name correctly.
It should be noted that it is not uncommon at all for victims of childhood sexual abuse to remain quiet for great periods of time before coming forward. And, had the CFNIS not failed to take my Alberta Social Service records into account, the CFNIS would have informed the Crown that there in fact was no one at home that I could have told.
School turned into an absolute nightmare as everyone at school knew what had happened. And unbeknownst to me at the time, the base military police were investigating the babysitter, and as a result of the babysitter’s confessions to the base military police the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit called in to investigate Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” with teenage boys on the base.
Fred R. Cunningham was the acting section commander of the CFSIU at the time. When I spoke to Fred in November of 2011 he stated that what Mr. P.S. had been doing with younger children on the base was well known. Fred said that many families had complained to the base military police about the actions of Mr. P.S.. Fred told me that the base military police had interrogated Mr. P.S. in his family’s PMQ and that Mr. P.S. broke down and started crying and then named Captain Father Angus McRae as having been the adult that had shown him what to do. What Fred didn’t tell me during our telephone conversation is that he was with the CFSIU and that he had been tasked with investigating McRae. I’ll have more about my conversation with Mr. Cunningham in another post.
In July of 2015 I spoke with Jack, the father of Mr. P.S.. Jack stated pretty well much the same that Fred Cunningham had stated to me, that the base military police cam to his house and questions his son. Jack said that he told his son that “you can’t keep doing this” and that his son named Captain Father Angus McRae.
Yes, Captain McRae did face a court martial to answer to Criminal Code of Canada charges. This was well within the scope of military prosecutorial jurisdiction. Sections 155, 156, and 157 were not considered to be “Rape” so therefore they were not excluded from the military’s mandate.
However, according to both Fred Cunningham and Jack, the number of charges brought against Captain McRae had been dropped substantially to only the charges involving the sexual acts between McRae and Mr. P.S..
Cunningham stated that it was a decision of the “Brass”.
Jack stated that he never understood why out of 25 children involved that his son was the only one required to testify against Captain McRae.
So yeah, this turned into a massive fiasco on CFB Namao. No wonder the Canadian Forces “threw a wall of secrecy” over the court martial and sealed the evidence records.
“Under orders from superiors” They all are, aren’t they? “in-camera trial and none of the evidence needs to be made public” What were they trying to hide? The true number of children abused, that’s what.
The summer of 1980 was probably the loneliest summer of my life. I spent the entire summer hiding out from the other kids. I’d leave home early in the morning and go play in the woods. I wouldn’t return home until late in the evening.
When school started up in September, it was just as bad as it was at the end of the previous school year. The beatings, the taunting, and the teasing were relentless.
Just after my birthday in late September of 1980, my family was moved from Canadian Forces Base Namao to Canadian Forces Base Greisbach. This was a total distance of 10km. I thought that things would get better at my new school, Major General Greisbach School, but they didn’t. The kids at Major General Greisbach knew who I was even before I started there. The kids on CFB Namao knew the kids on CFB Greisbach, they played hockey together at the base rink on CFB Namao, they went to movies together at the theatre on CFB Namao. Some of the older kids from CFB Namao and from CFB Greisbach even attended M.E. Lazerte High School as neither school on CFB Namao or CFB Greisbach went beyond grade 9.
After my arrival at CFB Greisbach in October of 1980, I started going to see a man named Terry. Terry was different from the other adults that I knew at the time as he insisted that I call him by his first name. I probably did know Terry’s last name back then, but becuase I used it so infrequently I more than likely forgot about it. It wouldn’t be until August of 2011 that I would be reminded of Terry’s last name. I would also discover who his employer was.
Whenever I met with Terry, he was always dressed in suits.
At first, my visits with Terry were quite frequent, something around three times a week, right after school. Sometimes Terry would see me in a private room at the school, but mostly Terry would see me in an office over by the base administration offices.
Terry seemed to know what had happened on CFB Namao. Terry knew that I had been involved in with the babysitter and that it had been going on for a while. Terry was upset that I had apparently encouraged the babysitter to touch my younger brother. For the record, my father would often parrot this. Terry never mentioned anything about Captain Father Angus McRae, and I don’t honestly know if he knew anything about my visits to the chapel with the babysitter. But then again, after the “sickly sweet grape juice” I honestly can’t remember anything. The fact that I never remember how I got home after the visits to the chapel is always caused me concern. I know my grandmother caught me once while I was intoxicated. She was furious. She wanted to know which of the older kids on base had gotten me drunk. It wasn’t just any older kid on base. It was Mr. P.S. and Captain McRae.
There is one thing that has always stuck out in my mind. I can’t remember who said it to me. It was either Terry or my father. I was being driven over to Terry’s office by the base admin building. As we drove past the detention barracks on CFB Greisbach one of those two told me that if I didn’t smarten up, that I would end up in prison like the padre from CFB Namao as they pointed at the detention barracks.
Terry told me that he was convinced that I was showing signs of a mental illness as I had been caught having sex with another boy. Terry would often say that boys aren’t supposed to have sex with other boys. Terry would say that boys are supposed to have sex with girls.
Terry would frequently remind me that he had the military police watching me, and if the military police ever saw me kiss or touch another boy on base, that he’d send me off to the Alberta Hospital.
I’m almost certain that Terry is the reason why my bedroom door was taken off. My father told me just after we moved into the PMQ on CFB Greisbach that what I had done on CFB Namao proved that I couldn’t be trusted alone in my bedroom.
My grandmother, who was still living with us at the time, was very angry with my father for taking my bedroom door off. It’s too bad that my grandmother died back in 1986 because I’d sure love to know what she knew McRae fiasco.
I do know that it was Terry’s idea that I be kept away from sports as there would be a risk of me possibly seeing other boys in the change room. Once, my school sent home a permission slip for a field trip to the swimming pools at the Kinsmen Sports Centre in Edmonton. My father said that he wasn’t going to sign the permission slip as there would be other naked boys in the change room and that I wouldn’t be able to control myself.
This freaked me out because I was actually attracted to another boy. He was my age. He lived in PMQ #68, I lived in PMQ #79. We were quite attracted to one another. But I was quite conflicted back then. We were both 11 years old. He was a little older than me. On one hand I really liked him, but on the other hand both Terry and my father were telling me that what I had been caught doing (being buggered by a boy 2x my age) was a sign of mental illness. And then there was another issue. His father was a Sgt. in the army, quite possibly the Canadian Airborne Regiment. My father was a master corporal in the air force. When his father found out about the two of us, that was the end of our relationship. My father was beyond furious. He wanted to know what the fuck was so wrong with me that I couldn’t listen to what Terry was trying to help me with. My father told me that if another father on base ever complained about me being involved with their son that he’d break my fucking neck.
And no, I don’t believe that my abuse at the hands of McRae / Mr. P.S. made me attracted to other males. I think that predators like McRae search out children from dysfunctional homes. And like it or not, but there were a lot of dysfunctional families living on the PMQ patches back then. I also think that predators like McRae search out boys who may be different as they’re more likely to keep their mouths shut out of fear of others discovering the child’s “difference”.
My father was a lowly master corporal at the time. I would learn in 2011 why my father treated Terry’s words like gospel.
Around the start of the ’81 – ’82 school year, I started seeing more adults. There was Pat and Wayne and a few other adults. Sometimes we’d go for meetings where my father, Terry, Pat, and Wayne were all in attendance. Sometimes even my younger brother and my stepmother would attend.
It was after the first couple of meetings with Pat and Wayne that my bedroom door went back on, however, I was never to close the door. The only time the door was to be closed was if I was being punished.
The odd thing about these meetings with Pat and Wayne is that Terry never once brought up my “mental illness” or my attraction to other boys. And after I started seeing Pat and Wayne, both Terry and my father would caution me ahead of time to be very careful with what I said to Pat and Wayne as they’d twist my words.
Around xmas of ’82, Pat and Wayne would often pick me up from school and take me to a facility where there were other kids living in “pods”. They’d often ask me if I liked the idea of living in a pod with other kids and having kids my age that I could make friends with.
The Yellowhead Youth Centre – formerly Westfield.
Pat and Wayne at this time would also ask me if there was any family member that I possibly wanted to go live with.
None of this made any sense to me at the time.
Sometime in the new year of 1983, Pat, Wayne, and Terry took me out of class and had a talk with me. Pat did most of the talking, but when she said that they were going to take me away from my father, I freaked out.
The first mention of me being placed into foster care.
At the time I thought that it was my fault. My mother had left a few years prior, and my father had told me it was because I was so bad that it drove her crazy and she left. My grandmother had just recently left. And now Pat, Wayne, and Terry wanted to take me away from my father. I was pretty sure that Terry was going to send me to the Alberta Hospital. I ran out of the room and I barricaded myself in the boys washroom.
Pat and Wayne were trying to get me to calm down. Terry had other ideas. He kicked the partition door open, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me through the school back to the room we had been in. He then forced me into the chair, restrained me, and told me to shut up and do as I was told.
My reaction to learning that I was about to be removed from the home.
I remember looking at Pat and Wayne for help, and they seemed just as shocked as I was.
The day after.
Shortly after this, I never went to school again.
When I asked my father why I wasn’t allowed to go back to school, he said that my teachers had complained that I was still attracted to boys and therefore I had been expelled.
Shortly after this, we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.
We drove from CFB Greisbach to CFB Downsview in a small Datsun B210. Once we had crossed over the Saskatchewan border and were staying at our first motel I asked my father why we were moving. My father said that because I was still attracted to boys, my counselors wanted to give me drugs to stop me from liking boys. He said that he didn’t want me taking these drugs and that he was saving me from my counselors.
In August of 2011, I would learn the truth about what was going on back then. To help build my case against the babysitter, I started tracking down my school records from back then. I wanted to show the CFNIS that the abused I endured on CFB Namao had caused me some issues.
I made two startling discoveries in August of 2011. First, I discovered that I had been in foster care.
Second, I discovered that Terry wasn’t just some guy in a suit.
Terry was Canadian Armed Forces Officer Captain Terry Totzke. Captain Totzke was a military social worker.
My name used to be Robert Gill
Pat and Wayne were child care workers with Alberta Social Services.
According to the Alberta Social Service records, Captain Totzke had been called in by both mine and my brother’s school teachers just right after we had arrived on CFB Greisbach for the odd behaviour that we were exhibiting. I guess that 1-1/2 years of depraved sexual abuse will make children do odd things.
Somehow, Captain Totzke was aware of what had happened to me on CFB Namao, he was convinced that I just needed to stop being attracted to other boys and that everything would be fine. That’s why Captain Totzke had no concern whatsoever about the dysfunction in my household.
Totzke, being a military social worker, would have been involved with the enforcement of CFAO 19-20, which was the military’s policy for the “Sexual Abnormality, investigation, medical examination, and disposal”. Apparently homosexuals back then were less than trash and should simply be disposed of.
“Counselling and rehabilitation” a fancy term for “Conversion Therapy”
And again yes, I was not a member of the Canadian Forces, and CFAO 19-20 shouldn’t have applied to me. But CFAO 19-20 did set the attitude of military members towards “homosexuals”, and as Section 10 of CFAO 19-20 shows, the Canadian Forces believed that homosexuals could be “rehabilitated”, in other words the Canadian Armed Forces believed in “Conversion Therapy”
In November of 1981 our teachers and our school principal grew weary of Captain Totzke’s lack of action and called in Alberta Social Services. Alberta Social Services started doing home visits. These visits would correspond with my bedroom door being put back on my room.
My father, being the idiot that he often was, unwittingly signed the paperwork that admitted me into the foster care system in Alberta. I was at the first stage in which the child to be apprehended is allowed to remain in the household until a determination of risk can be made.
That determination came on January 26th, 1983. This was the day that Alberta Social Services warned Captain Terry Totzke that my removal from my father’s house was imminent and depended solely on my father attending family counselling as Alberta Social Services had determined that the dysfunction in my household was due to my father’s emotional issues and my father’s inability to control his anger.
I hadn’t been expelled from school.
The school I was attending was run by Westfield. It was a school for emotionally disturbed children. The children in this program often came from “at risk” dysfunctional homes. For me to attend this school, my father was required to sign the foster care admission paperwork. And if Alberta Social Services wanted to apprehend me, they could at anytime while I was at school.
Once I stepped foot back on base, that was a different story. Being that I lived on a Defence Establishment access to my house was subject to the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations. This meant that anyone who wasn’t subject to the Code of Service Discipline who wanted to step foot on the base technically needed the permission of someone within the Canadian Forces. And I’d be willing to bet you that Captain Totzke was not about to give Alberta Social Services permission to step foot on base to apprehend me.
I spoke with one of my child care workers around 2015. She remembered me. She also remembered Captain Totzke. She also remembered that Captain Totzke had a different agenda from what Alberta Social Services had.
Going through my social service records, my civilian child care workers and case workers never once voiced any concerns about my apparent homosexuality. They were more concerned with my father and his issues.
When Captain Totzke first became involved with my family, he sent my father, my brother, and I for psychological evaluations with a psychologist. I was found to be extremely fearful of men, I was convinced that my father was going to kill me, I absolutely did not like physical contact, I preferred to be left alone, and I loved to read. My I.Q. was evaluated to be 136 +/-6.
My father was found to not accept responsibility for his family, blamed others for problems with his family, blamed others for his problems, blamed his mother for the problems his sons were exhibiting,
Richard had no shame what so ever.
and he blamed his mother for hiding problems from him,.
The Gill family put the “fun” in dysfunctional .
After Alberta Social Services became involved with my family, my child care workers noted that my father’s anger was out of control, that he needed to learn how to direct his anger in a useful manner,
Richard’s anger issues were legendary.
and that he often used his frequent absences as excuses for not attending family counselling. He also often told conflicting stories.
Richard would often promise one thing one day and then renege on that promise the very next day.
I wasn’t the only boy from CFB Namao that had been messed with by Captain Terry Totzke. There was another family of boys that had become involved with Totzke in the days after the McRae fiasco. The eldest brother appears to have been dealt with the hardest by Totzke. This boy ended up committing suicide years later. This boy’s younger brother blames the treatment they received in the days after the McRae fiasco as being something the older brother never recovered from and it was something that haunted the older brother.
There was also another family from CFB Namao. Two older boys and one girl. Both of the older boys had apparently been involved with Captain McRae. Both of the boys ended up seeing a military social worker. The boys ended up sexually assaulting the young sister in an apparent attempt to show that they obviously weren’t homosexuals.
Due to the 3-year time bar that existed in the National Defence Act prior to 1998, Captain Terry Totzke could never be investigated by a modern day investigation in order to ascertain exactly what it was that he was doing with the boys from CFB Namao who had been caught up in the Captain McRae / Mr. P.S. child sex abuse scandal.
And I have severe doubts that the Canadian Armed Forces have any appetite to ask the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to investigate how many male military dependants were forced to undergo “conversion therapy” at the hands of the military social workers.
And then there’s the matter of records. If it wasn’t for my civilian social service records, I would never have known that Terry was actually an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. Soon after I received my Alberta Social Service records, I submitted a request to DND for the military’s records of my involvement with Captain Totzke.
Obviously I have no idea who has these records. It is virtually impossible for me to know where these records are being held.
This means that anyone who had their brain messed with by a military social worker when they were young faces an uphill battle to prove that they were in fact involved with the military social workers. And if you can’t prove that you had involvement, then DND doesn’t have to apologize for any mistreatment that you had received.
I can only wonder how many former military dependants took their own lives as a result of this.
One of the most signifcant examples of “Conflict of Interest” that I have ever seen is having the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service investigating crimes that could cause the Office of the Minister of National Defence to suffer civil actions.
Much as when Mr. P.S. sued Angus McRae in March of 2001, anyone who wants to initiate a civil action against a person who had sexually abused them while the abuser was subject to the Code of Service Discipline would also be required to sue the Office of the Minister of National Defence.
Granted, I can’t recall any sexual abuse at the hands of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae. However, that’s more a function of the alcohol that Captain McRae had his altar boy, Mr. P.S. give to me on the five distinct visits to McRae’s living quarters at the base chapel.
We know from the findings of the Fynes Public Interest Hearings that the investigators with the CFNIS do not run their own investigations. The chain of command within the CFNIS determine the scope and breadth of any particular CFNIS investigation.
This is one of the reason why you never hear of investigators within the CFNIS making “interference” complaints to the Military Police Complaints Commission. There can be no interference with a CFNIS investigation. CFNIS investigation do not belong to the investigator. Investigations that fall within the CFNIS mandate are always designed by the chain of command within the CFNIS.
Around 2016, Sgt Damon Tenaschuk told me he was about to submit a brief to the Alberta Crown. Sgt. Tenaschuk asked me if I thought he had done enough. I asked him if he had found other victims or witnesses. He said that he had not. So I asked him about running a Crime Stoppers appeal. He said to me that he would have to speak with his commanding officer to see if his C/O thought that this would be okay to do.
This was the Crime Stoppers Appeal. Even though the connection between Captain McRae and Mr. P.S. had been well established, you’d be hard pressed to know that McRae had molested over 25 children on CFB Namao in this time period.
When Mr. P.G. made himself known to me as another victim of Mr. P.S., I passed his name on to Sgt, Damon Tenaschuk. Sgt. Tenaschuk informed me that CFNIS chain of command had decided that Mr. P.G.’s statement would be a separate complaint from mine and that my investigation would not contain any statement from Mr. P.G..
So, as you can see, it is the chain of command that runs the CFNIS investigations and not the CFNIS investigators. The CFNIS investigators are nothing more than “meat puppets” that dance as per their master’s wishes.
The anatomy of a CFNIS investigation.
Much is made about the apparent “independence” of the CFNIS from local chain of command interference. However, the investigators within the CFNIS as well as the officers within the CFNIS hierarchy are all still subject to section 83 of the National Defence Act.
Section 83 of the National Defence Act sounds like a perfect reason as to why someone should just go along with the game plan and not make waves. And no, there are no exemptions from section 83. Section 83 applies to every person who is subject to the Code of Service Discipline all the way from the Chief of Defence Staff all the way down to a fresh new baby faced recruit.
One thing that I am almost certain of now, is that due to the sheer number of children that Captain Father Angus McRae and his altar boy Mr. P.S.. molested on Canadian Forces Base Namao, I don’t think I’m anywhere near the first person to have ever brought a complaint against Mr. P.S..
Mr. P.S. had criminal convictions going back to 1985.
Mr. P.S. convictions in 1985
In the summer of 2012, I had made acquaintances with an RCMP constable from the Morinville Detachment in Edmonton. This Constable was the one who told me Mr. P.S.’s date of birth was June 20th, 1965. This was the first hint I had that the CFNIS were being far less than truthful with me when Sgt. Cyr tried to tell me that Mr. P.S. was only 13 years old in 1980. Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, a person under the age of 14 could not be tried for Criminal Code offences.
The RCMP constable that I had dealt with also ran a CPIC check on Mr. P.S.. The constable wouldn’t tell me any exact details from the CPIC check other than that in addition to the charges and convictions mentioned in the newspaper article, that Mr P.S. had numerous more convictions between 1985 and 2000. Some but not all the convictions were for child sexual assault. Now, what if these charges and convictions in the ’90s weren’t for “current” sexual assaults? What if this was other kids from CFB Namao coming forward with complaints against Mr. P.S. for what he had done on CFB Namao.
On January 14, 2000, Mr. P.S. tried to commit suicide. What if Mr. P.S.’s suicide attempt was due to the fact that he knew he was never going to be able to escape what he had done on CFB Namao? Both the 3-year time bar flaw and the summary investigation flaw meant that Captain Father Angus McRae could never be held responsible for what had occurred on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980. However, as Mr. P.S. was not subject to the Code of Service Discipline, he could be held responsible for what had happened on CFB Namao, regardless of the fact that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae may have forced or induced Mr. P.S. to act the way he did on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980.
That I think would drive anyone to the point of suicide.
It is apparent now that the CFNIS knew right from the word go of the connection between Mr. P.S. and Captain Father Angus McRae.
When I was interviewed by Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock in March of 2011, he asked me some peculiar questions during the video interview that didn’t make sense at the time. When Sgt. Christian Cyr contacted me on May 3rd, 2011 and told me that Mr. P.S. was only 13 years old in the spring of 1980 he was trying to set me up to believe that Mr. P.S. was too young at the time of the sexual offences to have charges brought against him. And if Sgt. Cyr had just shut his damn mouth at the time, I might have believed him. But Sgt. Cyr had to be a dumbass and he had to mention Captain Father Angus McRae being arrested for molesting children on the base. It was at that point that I knew something was going wrong with the investigation.
Then on July 18th, 2011 during a telephone conversation between myself and Master Warrant Officer Terry Eisenmenger, MWO Eisenmenger told me that his investigators couldn’t find any evidence that Mr. P.S. had committed the crimes that I had accused him of and that this case was going no where due to a complete lack of evidence. It was interesting when I made my application for Judicial Review in 2013 and I received the certified tribunal records, I discovered that when I spoke to MWO Eisenmenger, the CFNIS hadn’t yet talked to any other victims or even tried to contact Mr. P.S. at that point in time.
All of this tells me that the CFNIS are well aware of who Mr. P.S. is. And I have no doubt in my mind that the CFNIS are well aware of the $4.3 million dollar civil action that Mr. P.S. brought against the Minister of National Defence in March of 2001.
I also have no doubt that the CFNIS are well aware that the Office of the Minister of National Defence accepted Legal Liability for the personal injuries that Mr. P.S. suffered at the hands of Captain McRae.
I have the Department of Justice paperwork from when the DOJ represented the Minister of National Defence in this matter. Most of it is blanked out. But it is safe to say that in convincing Mr. P.S. to settle out of court, the Office of the Minister of National Defence agreed to certain terms favourable to Mr. P.S.. I can only wonder if one of these terms is that the Office of the Minister of National Defence agreed to ensure that Mr. P.S. would no longer face any “harassment” related to his actions on CFB Namao in the years of 1978 until 1980. I know this sounds crazy, but there’s the conversation that Mr. P.S. had with CFNIS investigator Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk in August of 2011.
What exactly was Mr. P.S. talking about when he said that anything he had been involved in as a youth “had already been handled by the military”. Is Mr. P.S. referring to the terms of his out of court settlement with the Minister of National Defence? If the CFNIS were to have brought charges against Mr. P.S., and this broke the terms of the out of court settlement agreement, would this allow Mr. P.S. to take further action against the Minister of National Defence hence the comment “a lawyer would be handling that”?
What’s very interesting is that the CFNIS scrubbed the line “anything he had been involved in as a youth had already been handled by the military” from the Crown Brief that was submitted to the Alberta Crown both in 2011 and in 2018.
This is what Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk submitted to the Alberta Crown in 2018 Notice something missing?This is what was submitted by Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock in 2011
Besides that fact that Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk basically resubmitted the 2011 CFNIS investigation Crown Brief to the Alberta Crown again in 2018, it’s rather intersting that the CFNIS thought there was a need to remove the comment about the military “handling things” for Mr. P.S.
The sad thing is, it looks as if the Alberta Crown doesn’t know, or doesn’t care that it was fed a load of B.S.
And this brings me right back around to the issue of Conflict of Interest.
The CFNIS were well aware of the history of Mr. P.S., and in doing a CPIC check on Mr. P.S., they would have discovered that they were dealing with a sexual predator that had a thing for young children.
Yes, these past convictions from 1984 onward don’t necessarily prove that Mr. P.S. sexually abused me, my brother, and 4 other children that I knew he abused on a regular basis. However, these past convictions do prove that Mr. P.S. is deserving of a thorough investigation. An investigation that would be more deeper and detailed than someone who had a CPIC record check that came back negative for any criminal interactions.
What this does tell me though is that the CFNIS investigation was influenced by chain of command authority in such a manner as to ensure that Mr. P.S. was never again charged for any crime that he committed on Canadian Forces Base Namao after the date of his 14th birthday on June 2oth, 1979.
The only question is this.
Was this decision made so as not to break any covenant agreed to in the out of court settlement between Mr. P.S. and the Office of the Minister of National Defence, or was this decision not to charge Mr. P.S. made solely to ensure that the chain of liability between the Office of the Minister of National Defence and the victims of both Mr. P.S. and Captain McRae remains severed?
Remember, the Office of the Minister of National Defence did accept General Legal Liability for the personal injuries that Mr. P.S. suffered at the hands of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae. Now that the Office of the Minister of National Defence has accepted liability for the abuse Mr. P.S. suffered, how hard would it be for the victims of Mr. P.S. to also make claims of liability against the Office of the Minister of National Defence? If there had been criminal convictions brought against Mr. P.S., claims of civil liability would be rather elementary to establish in court. Without criminal convictions brought against Mr. P.S., suing the Office of the Minister of National Defence would be a fruitless endeavour as the Office of the Minister could argue that no crime occurred.
And the Minister just happens to be ultimately in charge of the police force that would possibly subject his own office to civil liability.
And this is why I believe that this whole investigation from the word “Go” has been a classic textbook example of what a conflict of interest looks like.
If you thought that yesterday’s post relating to the 3-year time bar flaw was interesting, you ain’t seen anything yet.
Legislative Summary LS-311E detailed another interesting flaw that existed in the National Defence Act prior to 1998. The flaw had been temporarily addressed via an administrative order in November of 1997, but nonetheless this flaw was so substantial that it had to be addressed by Bill C-25 “An Act to Make Amendments to the National Defence Act”.
Sections 160 to 162 of the 1985 National Defence ActSections 138 through 140 of the 1970 National Defence Act
Section 138 of the 1970 Act, and Section 160 of the 1985 Act defines “commanding officer” as being the commanding officer of the accused. In the case of Captain Father Angus McRae, the Canadian Forces have confirmed that CFB Namao base commander Colonel Dan Munro was Captain McRae’s commanding officer.
Section 139 of the 1970 Act, and Section 161 of the 1985 Act both stipulate that after a person subject to the Code of Service Discipline has been charged with a Service Offence, the commanding officer of the accused will conduct a summary investigation.
Section 140 of the 1970 Act, and Section 162 of the 1985 Act both stipulate that the commanding officer of the accused has the power to dismiss charges brought against their subordinate. Or the commanding officer could cause the charges to proceed against their subordinate.
The Canadian Forces didn’t have an independent “prosecutor” until after the passing of Bill C-25 in 1998. The commanding officer had the primary discretion to either proceed with charges or to dismiss the charges. Once the commanding officer made this decision, they would pass this up the chain of command to the “prosecutor”.
The Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia had some very serious reservations of the Commanding Officer acting as a prosecutorial agent. The Commission found that commanding officers could operate as investigators, prosecutors, and judiciary. The Commission pointed out that in the Civilian justice system, those three roles were conducted by three completely separate entities. Civilian police have no sway over the prosecutors and prosecutors have no sway over the judiciary. Commanding officers on the other hand could be subjected to “command influence”. Military police officers had to obey the commands of superior officers.
What did Legislative Summary LS-311E have to say about Section 160 to 162 of the 1985 National Defence Act?
Page 18 of Legislative Summary LS-311E
The decision to prosecute or not to prosecute was in the hands of commanding officers prior to November of 1997. As the Somalia Inquiry discovered, these commanding officers had no legal training, no legal background, swore no peace officer’s oath. Their decisions could easily be influenced by the chain of command as well as the commanding officer’s own parochial interests.
What charges could a commanding officer dismiss prior to November of 1997? Gross Indecency; Indecent Assault; Buggery; Sexual Interference; Invitation to Sexual Touching; and Sexual Exploitation. These were crimes that the Canadian Forces were not precluded from conducting a service tribunal for.
“regardless of whether or not the commanding officer would have the authority to try the accused on the charge”
What I am not certain of, but seems to be indicated nonetheless by the language in the italics on page 18 of Legislative Summary LS-311e, is could commanding officers dismiss charges related to Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape? Commanding officers definitely would not have had the authority to try the accused on the charges of Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape.
What is the fallout of a commanding officer dismissing charges prior to November of 1997?
As LS-311E states “the effect of a decision of a commanding officer to dismiss a charge is that no other authority – military or civil- can thereafter proceed against the accused on the charge or any substantially similar offence arising out of the same facts”.
This means that anyone, who as a child was sexually abused on a military base, and whose abuser had their charges dismissed or reduced by their abuser’s commanding officer, could never bring charges against their abuser today.
According to the babysitter’s father, with whom I spoke to in July of 2015, the military police on CFB Namao in 1980 knew of 25 other children being molested by Captain McRae.
According to former Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit acting section commander Fred R. Cunningham, with whom I spoke in November of 2011, the military police in 1980 had numerous more charges ready to go to court martial against McRae, but that the “brass” reduced the number of charges brought against Captain McRae to only those involving the babysitter / altar boy.
Why did the Canadian Forces try to bury this matter in 1980?
It would have been quite embarrassing for the Canadian public to have found out that an officer with the Canadian Armed Forces had been committing “Acts of Homosexuality” with children as young as five years of age, on a military base none the less.
What were the implications of dropping the “excess” charges against Captain McRae and only charging him with enough offences to get him booted out of the military? If any child between May of 1980 and May of 1983 had tried to bring charges against Captain McRae, and those charges were similar to the charges that had been dropped, Captain McRae could not be charged.
What are the implications of the 3-year time bar? Anyone who had been sexually abused by Captain McRae would never have been able to bring charges against McRae after May of 1983.
It is apparent that the 3-year time bar flaw and the Summary Investigation flaw make it almost virtually impossible for anyone who was sexually abused as a child to bring charges against their abuser.
I wish I could say that these two flaws were the only issues that could stymie a person’s quest for justice.
However, as I will discuss in future blog postings, there are other issues at play that stand as road blocks to justice.
I recently watched a Netflix series called “Unbelievable”. This is a must watch program if you’re ever interested in just how badly the police themselves can screw up an investigation.
The story starts off in August of 2008 when an 18 year old woman named “Marie” makes a report to the Lynnwood Police Department that she had been raped. The police investigators in this matter screwed up the investigation from the start. They hounded “Marie”, they intimidated “Marie”, they made “Marie” repeat her story over and over all the while picking her story apart due to what they considered to be “inconsistencies”. The investigating officers placed special emphasis upon the statements of two of “Marie’s” former foster parents who thought that “Marie” wasn’t behaving like someone who had just been raped. In the end, “Marie” was coerced into admitting that she made the whole story up. The Lynnwood Police charged “Marie” with making a “False Report” In March of 2009 she was fined $500 by the courts and sentenced to probation, and ordered to attend counselling.
It wouldn’t be until February of 2011 that “Marie” was proved to have not lied at all. The FBI along with two Colorado police detectives from two different Colorado police departments arrested a man named Marc O’Leary. Upon searching his house for evidence, the police found a hard drive that contained pictures of “Marie” the night she had been raped and photographed by Marc O’Leary.
The two Lynnwood Police sergeants that had originally coerced “Marie” into admitting that she lied faced no repercussions. The City of Lynnwood did however refund “Marie” her $500 fine. “Marie” later settled out of court with the city for $150k.
How did this happen? I wish I knew. But, from my personal experience, this happens quite frequently. Police quite frequently start investigations with preconceived biases already floating around inside of their skulls.
In my case, I have no doubt in my mind that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service was well aware of who my abuser was, I have no doubt in my mind that the CFNIS knew about my abuser’s lengthy criminal record with numerous charges and convictions for sexual crimes involving children, I also have no doubt that the CFNIS knew of the direct connection between Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae, and my abuser, Mr. P.S.
Much like in “Marie’s” matter, my care giver at the time I was being abused gave the CFNIS in 2011 a false statement. Why’d he give the CFNIS a false statement? My Alberta Social Service paperwork from my childhood contained a report from a psychologist that had been hired by the Canadian Forces in October of 1980 to evaluate my family. This psychologist found that my father accepted no responsibility for his family, blamed others for problems with his family, expected others to solve his problems for him. My child case workers noted that my father often told conflicting stories from one session to the next, and that he often told people in positions of authority what they wanted to hear.
I honestly don’t remember much of my father from before we were posted to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in the spring of 1983. Prior to us living on CFB Downsview, my father was usually frequently away on training exercises or missions with the Canadian Forces. I know that on CFB Shearwater, he was frequently away. He was also away frequently when we lived on CFB Summerside. After my mother left in the spring of 1977, my father asked his mother to move in with us and raise my brother and I. When my grandmother moved back to Edmonton in the spring of 1978, my father received a compassionate posting to CFB Namao to be near his mother. Upon our arrival at CFB Namao, grandma and her husband moved into the house on base to again raise my brother and I. My father was infrequently home.
I think my father told the CFNIS investigators what they wanted to hear because he didn’t want to own up to the fact that it was his own alcoholic mother that he had brought into the house to raise his kids hired the babysitter that would end up molesting his sons for over a year and a half.
I also think that my father still bore some shame for the way that he would stand aside while I was psychologically traumatized in his presence by Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke. My father never once stood up to Captain Totzke. Sadly, my father seemed to absorb Captain Totzke’s ideas, and my father brought those ideas into our house on CFB Greisbach. I’ll talk more about Captain Totzke in a later post.
When I had my first frank talk with my father back in 2006 about Mr. P.S. and what he had done to me and my brother, my father wasn’t shocked. In fact my father had named Mr. P.S.. My father implored me to understand that he had nothing to do with the hiring of Mr. P.S. and that hiring Mr. P.S. had been my grandmother’s fault and that she was to blame.
I think my father’s statement played right into the hands of the chain of command within the CFNIS as when I spoke with Master Warrant Officer Terry Eisenmenger on July 18th, 2011, he stated that the CFNIS couldn’t find any evidence to corroborate my complaint against Mr. P.S. and that it looked as if my complaint was groundless and without merit.
Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces 