Tag: clergy

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

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

Hello Media,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(a) murder;

(b) manslaughter;

(c) sexual assault;

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

(e) aggravated sexual assault; or

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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