Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces
This is my experience trying to receive justice from a system that is designed to keep secrets.
Why didn’t you tell anyone?
Why didn’t you report the abuse sooner?
The problem is the military police, the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit, and numerous other “adults” such as Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke were well aware of the abuse.
I this video I ponder if I did the right thing and if it was worth it at all.
Well, I sure got played for a sucker, didn’t I?
Was it worth it?
Should I just have kept living my life with the opinion of Captain Totzke and my father that I was a homosexual and that I “allowed” the babysitter to molest my younger brother rattling around in my skull?
As my father said, did I go and make things worse by sticking my nose where I had no business to?
Right now it’s seven months until I find out if Parliament will follow through with the recommendations of the committee overseeing further amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada to allow foe Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health issues such as depression.
If you remember, I did submit a brief to the Committee reviewing Medical Assistance in Dying.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/AMAD/Brief/BR11776079/br-external/GarnetBobbie-e.pdf
So, did I do the right thing?
The meeting took place in a boardroom at VPD Headquarters and ran from 13:00 until 16:00.
On the complaint form that I had submitted to the MPCC I had selected the option box indicating that I would be open to an informal resolution so I got an informal resolution meeting.
So, first off I’ll apologize to Sgt. Winship for the complaint I brought against him, not because my complaint was without merit, but because as I discovered during the meeting that Sgt. Winship was not the lead investigator in my matter against the man from the sauna.
The lead investigator in my matter is actually Sgt. Justin Brady.
Sgt. Winship is actually the case manager.
Some of the highlights that came out of the meeting.
Sgt. Winship agreed that unlike a member of the Canadian Forces who can go through their chain of command to voice concerns and complaints against the CFNIS, as a civilian I do not have access to that avenue. I only have the MPCC and at that the MPCC doesn’t take complaints about “investigations”, the MPCC only accepts “conduct” complaints against investigators. This oversight in the National Defence Act seems to come from the mistaken understanding that only military members who can make complaints via their chain of command are the only persons making criminal complaints to the CFNIS. Civilian victims of crime such as myself are outliers that weren’t planned for.
(As a side note, as a civilian the prospect of redress is also unavailable to me. Redress is where a complaint is made directly to the Chief of Defence Staff and the CDS can review any matter brought to their attention. This is how Stephanie Raymonde was able to have her matter looked at again in 2014)
We talked for a bit about my distrust of the military justice system related to the news from the ’90s and pretty well up to the current day. The horrific flaws with the National Defence Act that had to be fixed due to the inability of the military justice system to deal with the illegal actions in Bosnia and Somalia. Then there were the findings of Madame Marie Deschamps in 2015 that found that the military justice system could not properly conduct sexual assault investigations, and the 2021 recommendations of former Supreme Court of Canada justice Louise Arbour that only civilian police be allowed to investigate military sexual assaults which resulted in Minister of National Defence Anita Anand ordering all current sexual assault investigations be moved to the civilian police.
I also discussed how I could never bring myself to trust the CFNIS after they took my father’s statement at full face value and never attempted to re-interview my father when my foster care records were made available to the CFNIS in 2011 and indicated that there were very serious concerns with my father’s statement. My father’s statement had a significant impact on the Crown’s decision to not lay charges against P.S. as my father claimed there was never a babysitter in the house.
Which brings up my matter and which was the cause of the MPCC complaint and the informal resolution meeting. Sgt. Winship assures me that there is nothing political with the decision for the CFNIS to retain my investigation. Sgt. Winship says that my investigation was sent for review and it was decided to keep it within the CFNIS because they were at the stage of interviewing both P.S. and R.B..
I don’t know how receptive P.S. will be to being interviewed by the CFNIS. The more I think about it the more I believe that P.S. attempted suicide in the year 2000 as too many brats from CFB Namao kept making complaints against him. So I’m pretty sure that P.S. will no doubt have a good attorney who will tell him to tell the CFNIS to go away.
R.B. is a different matter. The CFNIS are still waiting for Library and Archives Canada to give the CFNIS a copy of R.B.’s service file. I find it sad that law enforcement doesn’t have priority access to service files at the LAC.
We talked for a bit about counselling and if I’ve tried to access it. I explained that one of the most significant issues that I have with receiving counselling is that almost every counsellor that I’ve dealt with to date is unfamiliar with the military aspect of what I went through. Having a military social worker who was blaming me for basically allowing myself to be sexually abused really fucks with one’s brain. Being labelled by this military social worker as being a homosexual is just as bad as being blamed for the abuse. Having a father at home, who due to his rank of Master Corporal, was probably placing very special emphasis on what the Captain was saying was just as fucking devastating as what the Captain was saying. And even Sgt. Winship agreed that there is no way that I will be able to deal with the sexual assault components on their own without dealing with all of the other aspects. Sgt. Winship mentioned that male on male sexual assaults were just handled a lot differently back then. I added that I think what really bad was when Captain David Pilling requested that Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham investigate Captain Father Angus McRae for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” with boys on CFB Namao that this tarred all of McRae’s and P.S.’s victims as also being “homosexuals”. And back in the day, the official policy of the Canadian Armed Forces was that homosexuality was a mental defect. To this end, Sgt. Winship said that when he got back to Edmonton that he would talk to some counsellors that he knew of that specialized in treating survivors of military sexual assault trauma who also work with civilians to see if the would be able to somehow bring their military services into the civilian realm. We also discussed a bit about how military dependents such as myself are ineligible for assistance through the Canadian Armed Forces and how most provinces balk at picking up the costs for counselling or therapy, especially if the former dependent is living in a province where the assaults did not occur. Members and former members of the Canadian Forces can receive help no matter where they live. This is not true for former military dependents.
Communication is one of the things that we discussed. Just a periodic heads up along with an explanation of the current status of the investigation would be great.
We did briefly discuss the fallout of the Lamer Report, the findings of the Somalia Commission, the findings of Madame Marie Deschamps, recommendations of former Supreme Court of Canada justice Louise Arbour. I also brought up some of the concerns that the Military Police Complaints Commission has voiced about the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, a position that is not law enforcement and is not a sworn peace officer, making recommendations and issuing instructions for any CFNIS investigation and that how even though in theory the Provost Marshal is supposed to make those recommendations or instructions available to the “public” that all the Provost Marshal has to do is post a copy of those instructions in the 10th floor coffee room at National Defence Head Quarters and the Provost Marshal has met their obligation.
Sgt. Winship is adamant that he would not allow the chain of command to interfere with his investigations.
I brought up the matter of Corporal Stuart Langridge and how CFNIS investigator Sgt. Matthew Ritco had told the MPCC Inquiry that CFNIS brass had rewritten his report and instructed him to sign the new report.
Again Sgt. Winship insisted that he would have refused to sign the report.
All in all it was a productive meeting.
I’m still very wary of the CFNIS and the Canadian Forces, but at least I feel more comfortable with Sgt. Winship and the current investigation into the man in the sauna.
As much as I love the final report issued by the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2020 in which the MPCC gave a very subtle and discreet kick to Minister Harjit Sajjan’s balls there is one troubling aspect that has caused me concern.
It’s these pair of paragraphs in the final report.
Basically, the MPCC is stating that I was wrong to assume that the CFNIS were commanded by the Chain of Command to conduct the 2015 to 2018 portion of investigation GO 2011-5754 in such a manner as to not risk exposing in the present day what the Canadian Armed Forces tried to bury in 1980.
Yes, technically the Military Police Complaints Commission is correct in the sense that Captain McRae’s court martial was reported in the media. But lets’ see what was actually in the media versus what happened on the base.
In 1980 the Canadian media reported that Captain Father Angus McRae had committed buggery with “A” child. Not 2 children. Not 3 children. Not 10 children. Not 25 children.
ONE FUCKING CHILD.
Not 25 children between the ages of 5 and 15.
ONE FUCKING CHILD.
And that child was P.S..
The only child over the age of 14.
In September of 2002, the Departmental Public Affairs Office (DGPA-DPAPO) of the Department of Justice, which was representing the Department of National Defence and the Minister of National Defence, made edits to a press release that was going to be the Government of Canada’s response to the $4.5 million dollar action brought by P.S..
Why would the Government of Canada strike the words “Buggery”, “Gross Indecency”, and “Indecent Assault” while leaving the offence numbers 155, 156, 157?
My guess is that simple numbers are meaningless.
Don’t forget, in the early 2000’s, male child sexual abuse was finally being acknowledged. Prior to the mid ’90s and early 2000s it really wasn’t accepted that boys could be the victims of sexual assault.
And in 2002, the Criminal Code that was current in effect was the 1985 Criminal Code of Canada. Not the 1970 Criminal Code. If someone wanted to know what sections 155, 156, and 157 were and they grabbed a copy of the 1985 criminal code they’d really be confused as in the 1985 Criminal Code section 155 was Incest, section 156 was language dealing with offences committed prior to 1983, and section 157 was repealed.
Only if someone was really determined and went to a local law court library and got their hands on a copy of the 1970 Criminal Code would one be able to determine that sections 155, 156, and 157 related to Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery.
And even though the military police and the CFSIU in 1980 knew that as many as 25 children were being sexually abused by Captain McRae and that the military was aware that Captain McRae had confessed during his ecclesiastical to having molested boys for many years meaning that Captain McRae had more than likely molested children on Canadian Forces Base Kington, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, Canadian Forces Station Holberg, in addition to the 25 children he molested on Canadian Forces Base Namao, the Department of Justice was still going with Captain McRae having only molested “one” boy.
The Department of Justice even went so far as to note that the Canadian Forces had found Captain McRae guilty in a court martial and had subsequently kicked Captain McRae out of the military.
But the Department of Justice made no mention that many of the charges that the military police and the CFSIU had ready to go against Captain McRae had been dismissed by the chain of command prior to Captain McRae’s court martial.
The Department of Justice also fails to note in their press release that unlike in the modern day where charges have to be referred to a prosecutor, in the days of Captain McRae’s court martial it was Captain McRae’s commanding officer, base commander Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, that would determine during a summary investigation which charges would proceed and which charges would be dismissed and not a military prosecutor.
In 1980 Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro was Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, base commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao and Commanding Officer of Captain Father Angus McRae.
As Legislative Summary LS-311E (1998) indicates, it was Colonel Munro that determined the charges against Captain McRae.
As the Judge Advocate General indicated in 2018, it would be impossible to bring charges against Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro if it was found that he had acted improperly in 1980 and had committed the Criminal Code offence of “Obstruction of Justice”. And even if Daniel Edward Munro had just been following the orders of his superiors, the same 3-year-time-bar would apply to his superiors no matter how high up the chain of command this originated.
To this date the Canadian Forces are very happy to leave things in the past.
So, with all of this bullshit and all of the subterfuge and all of the lies is it any wonder that I’ve grown very tired?
When I went to the Edmonton Police Service in 2011 to lay charges against P.S. I honestly thought that I stood a decent chance of getting justice. And if I got justice then there was no way that my father was going to be able to keep blaming me for what I had allowed P.S. to do to my younger brother. My father would have to apologize for the way he had treated me in the aftermath of the P.S. / Captain McRae fiasco on CFB Namao.
The Canadian Forces and their defective investigation agency stole that away from me.
The court martial transcripts from McRae’s court martial, the CFSIU investigation paperwork, and what retired Warrant Officer Frederick R. Cunningham had told me on November 27th, 2011, all indicate that the military police in 1980 knew what P.S. had done. But the 2011 investigation was a big nothing burger.
My old man died in 2017 and got off scot-free. He’ll never have to apologize and explain his part in this horrid mess.
And I’m the one who is stuck with having to request Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health issues when it becomes legal in March of 2023 to erase all of the memories of 1978 through 1987 and 2011 to the present day.
In the summer of 2020 I made another complaint to the CFNIS regarding the man in the sauna that P.S. had provided me to at some point in time between May of 1980 and June 23rd, 1980.
This man was an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces who had been sent up to Canadian Forces Base Namao to assist Captain Father Angus McRae during the investigation into the “acts of homosexuality” that Captain McRae had committed with young boys on the base. This officer was a Major at the time. This officer himself would go on to have complaints of inappropriate sexual relations with children brought against him.
I made the complaint as I had evidence, paperwork from the Canadian Forces itself, that indicated that this Major was on the base during the relevant time and would have been a prime suspect as he would have no doubt been very familiar with P.S. as it was the statement of P.S. that brought Captain McRae to the attention of the military police and the CFSIU.
The investigating officer, Sgt. David Winship has only been in contact with me twice since the summer of 2020. This is not very confidence inspiring to say the least. In fact, the last time I was in contact with Sgt. Winship he said that there would only be communications from the CFNIS if something were to turn up. Basically it was “Fuck off Mr. Bees, and leave us the fuck alone. Don’t bother us with the shit from your childhood.”
Back in November of 2021 Minister of National Defence Anita Anand announced that the Canadian Armed Forces were going to hand over sexual assault investigations to the civilian police.
Not long after this story hit the media, I received this email from the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service Victim Service Coordinator
In January I received this email from James:
Why the fuck are the CFNIS so bound and determined to keep control of my investigation?
So, here I am engaged with the Military Police Complaints Commission once again.
This will be complaint #3
Complaint #1 for the original CFNIS GO 2011-5754 was a fucking unmitigated disaster. At that time I had no idea that the Provost Marshal would be looking after the complaint first and that the MPCC was extremely handicapped by the National Defence Act.
Complaint #2 worked out a little bit more in my favour. The MPCC laid out that the Military Police in 1980 knew that P.S. was molesting younger children on base and that this is what led the military police and the CFSIU to investigate Captain McRae in the first place. The MPCC also pointed out that the CFNIS had the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the Court Martial transcripts in their possession during the investigation of my complaint.
It will be very interesting to see how the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal responds to my complaint this time.
My complaint this time is related to the conduct of Sgt. David Winship of the CFNIS. That’s the way it goes. As I’ve explained before a person wishing to make a complaint to the MPCC can only complain about the investigators, not the investigation.
So anyways, my complaint is related to Sgt. Winship’s failure to comply with orders of Minister of National Defence that all sexual assault investigations be handed over to the outside civilian authorities. As part of my complaint I have included the email that I had received from Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk in which a legal officer with the office of the Judge Advocate General informed Sgt. Tenaschuk that due to the 3-year-time-bar that existed prior to 1998 Criminal Code charges could never be brought against Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro.
I explained to the MPCC that just as the 3-year-time-bar would have prevented the CFNIS from laying charges against Captain Father Angus McRae in 2011, and as the legal officer from the JAG confirmed charges could never be brought against Captain Father Angus McRae’s commanding officer Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro I full believe the reason for the CFNIS not handing my case over to the civilian police is that no charges can ever be brought against the man in the sauna whom P.S. provided me to for the purposes of receiving oral sex from an underage prepubescent male. I explained to the MPCC that as long as the CFNIS conduct the investigation they can give the Crown the most laughable case ever, a case that the CFNIS know will not be prosecuted. Or they can delay the case until the man I have accused dies. “Sorry Mr. Bees, we tried but the Crown wasn’t going for it” or “Oh geez Mr. Bees, retired Brigadier General R.B. died, that’s the end of the investigation, sorry”.
Were they to hand my case over to the civilian police, the civilian police are more than likely completely unaware of the existence of the 3-year-time-bar that existed from 1950 until 1998 and which put a 3-year time limit on the prosecution of indictable offences committed by persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline. I don’t think that the civilian police would be willing to do a “Dog ‘n’ Pony” show investigation into my complaint for the sake of helping the Canadian Forces do a coverup. And when it came time to prosecute retired Brigadier General R.B. and then civilian authorities were informed that the 3-year-time-bar meant that prosecution was impossible, I don’t think that the civilian police would have hesitated to tell me the reason as to why R.B. gets off scot-free.
I sent a letter to Minister of National Defence Anita Anand asking her why women who served in the Canadian Armed Forces get justice while males, who were sexually abused as children, are ineligible to receive justice.
I haven’t heard anything back.
And I don’t expect anything to change.
Interesting isn’t it.
This is exactly what the CFNIS and the MPCC told me in 2013.
P.S. didn’t want to speak to the investigators, so that was it – there was nothing the CFNIS could do.
And as my brother would say, you can’t force someone to talk to the police. If you talk to the police you only incriminate yourself. If the police had enough evidence they’d go to the Crown and get an arrest warrant.
One interesting thing that I did learn though is that if police have evidence to show that someone has committed similar offences in the same relative period of time the police can provide that evidence to the Crown in order to persuade the Crown to allow charges to be laid.
The Military Police Complaints Commission stated in the 2020 findings that the CFNIS had in their possession the CFSIU investigation paperwork from May and June of 1980 as well as the July 18th, 1980 CM62 court martial transcripts.
What did the CFSIU investigation and the CM62 court martial transcripts indicate?
They indicated the following:
Why didn’t the CFNIS pass this information on to the Crown?
The fact of the matter is the chain of command above the CFNIS did not want charges brought against P.S. as this would only open up a festering wound that the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence have kept a bandaid on for the last 40 years.
If the CFNIS had provided the Crown with enough evidence to indicate that P.S. was in fact KNOWN to have been molesting children and if the Crown had approved charges against P.S. this would have exposed the Canadian Armed Forces to the fallout that would have resulted from the Canadian public learning the truth about what had transpired on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980 and that the Canadian Forces had sacrificed the lives of numerous children/adults in favour of keeping a hideous secret out of the public eye.
Instead, in my matter the CFNIS just threw their hands up and said that P.S. didn’t want to talk to them so there was little they could do.
That’s what you call “bullshit”.
Beyond a doubt the CFNIS knew what P.S. had been up to. The CFNIS had all of the paperwork and they had his criminal record.
The CFNIS had two options.
(a) The CFNIS could have gone to the Crown with all of the evidence to show that P.S. wasn’t suspected of molesting children, P.S. was a confirmed child molester. The CFNIS could have then arrested him, brought him in to talk, and at least got the truth about what had happened back then even if it resulted in nothing more than symbolic charges.
-or-
(b) The CFNIS could have approached the case in a totally different manner. The CFNIS could have approached P.S. as a victim of Captain McRae whom was obviously molesting children as a direct result of Captain McRae’s grooming, instructions, and directions.
The problem with either option (a) or option (b) is that they exposed the office of the Minister of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces to multiple civil actions which would have none the less resulted in very negative media coverage.
This is why the CFNIS were not allowed to bring any type of charge or even to treat P.S. like a witness. The Chain of Command made the decision and their subordinates did as they were told. The past was going to stay in the past where it had been buried in 1980.
I can fully see the CFNIS still doing this. And remember, it’s not that the investigators are in on this duplicity. The order only has to be given to senior officers within the Provost Marshal or the CFNIS chain of command. Once the investigation has been shaped by the chain of command, the investigators never have a chance no matter how good their intentions are.
I think tis is one reason why various CFNIS investigators, “the good ones” made sure to share pertinent Information with me and made sure that I knew what documents to request via FOI and ATI requests.
And talking about moving cases out in to the civilian world, the CFNIS are in the process of handing their investigation of my complaint related to the man in the sauna.
I have a very good idea of who the man in the sauna was / is.
In the spring of 1980 a very specific major was sent from Ottawa to Canadian Forces Base Edmonton to assist Captain McRae with his affairs during the investigation and subsequent court martial.
This major was involved with the Canadian Forces Chaplaincy branch.
In the spring of 1980 I would have been 8 years old.
This would have been in the period of time between me having been caught being buggered by P.S. in the bedroom of his family’s PMQ and the house fire at his PMQ on June 23rd, 1980.
I had been swimming at the base pool. I was about to get changed when P.S. came over to me and coerced me to go to the sauna.
In the sauna was a man sitting in the far side. The man asked P.S. if I was really as good as P.S. said that I was. The man opened his towel and held his erect penis and motioned me to come over.
If I had to hazard a guess I would say that I had performed oral sex on P.S. at least two dozen times from the fall of 1978 until the spring of 1980. And this isn’t including the older boys that P.S would often hang out with.
So I put the man’s penis in my mouth and I played with his balls.
He stopped me just before he ejaculated.
I never saw this man again.
Now, if this man is who I think it is he would have known about P.S. and the affinity that P.S. had for children. He would have known that P.S. was the reason Captain McRae was in trouble. Was he trying to “blackmail” P.S. by getting P.S. to do something as horrible as pimping out an eight year old?
Or, seeing as how this man was a member of the Catholic church just as his subordinate Captain McRae was, did he have a thing for young children. If he knew the details of what P.S. and Captain McRae had been doing on the base, then he would have known that P.S. had been bringing children over to the rectory for Captain McRae and P.S. to molest. So maybe he knew that P.S. could supply him with fresh young meat.
And it’s not like the man I have accused is squeaky clean. This man has had his own troubles with the sexual molestation of children over the years.
Anyways, it remains to be seen how badly the CFNIS screwed up this investigation.
And you wonder why I am seriously considering medical assistance in dying in March of 2023 when it becomes legal for psychiatric issues. There’s only so much shit that one person can keep locked inside their skulls before it all becomes toxic. And no, seeking MAiD does not make me weak. Others who have been involved with the Captain Father Angus McRae have attempted suicide, have committed suicide, and have had mental health issues that have plagued them for their lives. And to have the Canadian Armed Forces do everything in their power to deny us our freedom from the torment associated with the events from CFB Namao is beyond the pale.
And here’s hoping that the media will pay attention to military dependents who were sexually abused on defence establishments by persons who were subjected to the Code of Service Discipline. We are stuck in a world of grey between the civilian justice system and the military justice system, between the provinces and between Ottawa.
If you’re keeping tally, I’ve blown a major, more than likely been buggered by a captain while drunk on wine, pleasured my 14 year old babysitter on numerous occasions, blew an enlisted guy on CFB Griesbach. And this was all before I turned 11.
It’s no wonder I hate sex.
Will it be business as usual or will there be meaningful change?
So Canada now has its second ever female Minister of National Defence.
The first ever female Minister of National Defence was Kim Campbell back in 1993. She wasn’t the Minister of National Defence for long as she went on to become Canada’s first female Prime Minister when Brian Mulroney, facing massive backlash for matters such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, decided to resign from politics.
Canada’s newest Minister of National Defence is Anita Anand. She has an extensive resume as a lawyer and as a law instructor. She was also the Minister of Public Services and Procurement since 2019. So she’s not exactly green behind the ears. And more importantly she has absolutely no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
Will she be able to bring change to the Department of National Defence? When I first heard that Harjit Sajjan had been designated as the Minister of National Defence in 2015 after the Liberals won the election I thought for sure that he would be able to bring meaningful change to DND and the CF as he was a soldier that actually had done tours in Afghanistan and he used to be a detective with the Vancouver Police Department. I couldn’t have been more wrong about Sajjan. So I’m not holding my breath with Anand. She is a corporate lawyer, so she might understand the legal threat that examining historical child sexual abuse might prove to be for the Government of Canada.
Minister Anand has two choices.
She can use her legal background for the greater good.
Or she can use her legal background to erect walls and barricades around DND and the CF.
I’m going to have to write her a letter.
A reminder that my other blogs can be found at https://beeshive.ca or https://bobbiebees.ca
(featured image of Anita Anand by Joey Coleman https://www.flickr.com/photos/joeycoleman_ca/51399570220/
image licences by https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ )
I was going to go after the media in this post, but I’ll save slagging the media for the next post. I’m going to share some information in this post that I was going to keep quiet about until I found a lawyer willing to take on this matter. But after the most recent lawyer I talked to walked away from this matter I figure what the hell, everyone should know what I know now.
Back in November of 2020, the Military Police Complaints Commission released its final report.
The report was very interesting in the way that it said that it couldn’t find anything that would substantiate my complaint against the CFNIS.
However, the MPCC did find fault with the CFNIS for leaning far too heavy upon the opinion of the Alberta Crown. It seemed that when the CFNIS told me on November 4th, 2011 that they couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that P.S. had molested me and my brother, this wasn’t true. The MPCC said that the initial 2011 investigation had ample evidence to indicate that the sexual assaults had occurred and that even the CFNIS chain of command was of the opinion that P.S. had molested my brother and I. The MPCC further indicated that the 2nd CFNIS investigation which took place from 2015 to 2018 further reinforced the 2011 CFNIS investigation.
The MPCC said that the CFNIS was wrong to have relied on the decision of the Alberta Crown to not prosecute as the Crown has a much higher bar for evidence than what a civil matter would require. A civil matter relies on the probability that a crime occurred. A criminal matter needs hard evidence to show that a crime did occur.
The Alberta Crown also has to take into account that if they did decide to prosecute P.S. for the crimes he committed from 1978 until 1980 that they’d have to pay for his travel expenses. The Crown would also have to pay for my travel expenses. And even if P.S. was found guilty, all they could do is sentence him to reform school as that was all that you could sentence a juvenile delinquent to. And I just can’t picture a 50 something male being sentenced to reform school (if those even exist anymore).
The probability in this matter comes from the fact that P.S. was indicated in the court martial records and the CFSIU investigation paperwork to have been on the radar of the military police in 1980 for having sexually assaulted numerous children on the base.
What is interesting about the 2nd investigation is according to the Military Police Complaints Commission, it affirms that the Canadian Forces military police in 1980 were aware that P.S. was sexually abusing children on the base. The MPCC labeled Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae as a pedophile. The MPCC further said that it appears that P.S. was committing sexual assaults as a result of being sexually assaulted himself at the hands of Captain Father Angus McRae.
The MPCC made a recommendation to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal that the Provost Marshal submit more evidence to the Alberta Victims of Crime Tribunal. The Provost Marshal agreed to this.
In February of 2021 the tribunal reviewing the 2018 decision of the Alberta Victims of Crime Board to deny me benefits overturned the decision of the board. The Tribunal indicated that as a result of receiving more information from the Canadian Forces Military Police and after having read my Alberta Social Services foster care records that it was very apparent that I had been a victim of numerous sexual assaults, that these assaults were committed by multiple parties, that I endured numerous penetrations, and that my social service records indicate that I suffered psychological trauma as a result.
Why didn’t the CFNIS tell me on November 4th, 2011 that they believed me, and that their investigation indicated that P.S. did assault me and my brother?
I don’t think it’s accidental that the CFNIS leaned too heavily upon the decision of the Alberta Crown.
Even though the Alberta Crown did urge me to file a civil action against P.S., this would have been an impossibility. No lawyer in this country would have taken on this matter if the police investigation didn’t indicate even in the slightest likelihood that a criminal offence occurred.
Was the CFNIS protecting P.S.?
No.
I fully believe that the CFNIS were protecting the Minister of National Defence.
Or more precisely, I believe the office of the Minister of National Defence via the Vice Chief of Defence Staff wanted to ensure that any potential link between P.S. and Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae was not established via the CFNIS investigation.
As laid out in the 2020 Final Report of the Military Police Complaints Commission, P.S. was abusing children as a direct result of the abuse that P.S. was receiving at the hands of Captain McRae.
P.S. was a juvenile at the time.
The Juvenile Delinquents Act at the time indicated that the adult who contributed to the delinquency of a minor was culpable for the crimes committed by that child.
Angus McRae was a member of the Regular Force at the time of the sex abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
The office of the Minister of National Defence has an obligation to defend not only the Canadian Armed Forces against civil actions, the office of the Minister of National Defence is also expected to defend members of the Canadian Forces.
This means that if I wanted to initiate a civil action against P.S. for the damages I incurred as a result of the abuse I suffered at the hands of P.S., I would actually have to name Captain McRae in the action as Captain McRae was the adult that contributed to the delinquency of P.S.
The abuse occurred on a secure defence establishment, for which the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence had the sole authority to allow or deny access to.
The Canadian Armed Forces also supplied, trained and staffed the law enforcement agency that was responsible for the security and safety of all persons on that secured defence establishment.
Captain McRae was a member of the Regular Force who had been hired and vetted by the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting process.
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were aware of the fact that Captain Father Angus McRae was giving alcohol to the children on the base, and was sexually abusing children in the rectory at the base chapel.
For all of these reasons, the Minister of National Defence would have to be named in any civil action.
The Minister of National Defence would be represented by the Attorney General of Canada and the Department of Justice.
Both the Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of National Defence are represented by the Department of Justice.
All three of these agencies have access to unlimited tax payer funds to “defend” the Office of the Minister of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces from their responsibilities.
In 2015 I spoke with the lawyer that had represented P.S. in his action against the Minister of National Defence. This lawyer said that he would never take on a matter like this again. The Minister of National Defence and the Department of Justice enjoy access to unlimited funds from taxpayers and they also have a plethora of lawyers and law firms at their disposal.
As P.S. stated in his Notice of Claim, there exists a great power imbalance between the plaintiff (P.S.) and the Defendants (the Archdiocese of Edmonton and the Department of National Defence).
In his civil action against the Minister of National Defence, P.S. was requesting $4.3 million dollars in damages. I don’t have access to the settlement figures, but based on the type of paperwork present in the settlement, P.S. seems to have received less than $250.000.00 from the Minister. There were two other parties, and all three parties agreed to pay equal amounts. So, it would appear that P.S.settled his $4.3 million dollar action for less than $750,000.00.
From the Department of Justice paperwork that I have, it appears that it was the Department of Justice that was doing all of the heavy lifting on behalf of the other two parties.
The Department of Justice was trying to put together an argument that while Angus McRae was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces Regular Force, DND and the CF shouldn’t have been liable as what McRae was doing was illegal and not part of his expected duties. This argument would have been laughed out of court. But DND had strung P.S. and his lawyer along long enough that it appears that they took the much reduced settlement offer in November of 2008 with the realization that DND could play the waiting game for the rest of eternity.
It took 8 years for DND and the DOJ to settle with P.S. even though Captain McRae had been directly convicted of abusing P.S..
Which brings me to the topic of lawyers.
Yes, I have tried everything in my power to get lawyers to look at this matter.
I had even assumed that with the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission and the Alberta Tribunal that things would be so much easier.
Well, they’re not.
It comes down to the fact that any lawyer that I want to hire would have to face off against the Attorney General of Canada and the Department of Justice.
So no, it’s not for a lack of trying. It’s just the no lawyer in their right mind wants to spend the next 15 to 20 years trying to reach a settlement with an agency that has an unlimited amount of tax payer dollars at its disposal.
P.S. was very lucky that he was named as the sole victim of Captain Father Angus McRae in 1980.
The rest of us would have to fight this lawsuit based on circumstantial evidence and probability.
The Department of Justice would be able to use its infinite resources to drag this matter out so long in court that all of the victims of P.S. and Captain McRae either die off of old age, or the lawyer involved just gives up and walks away.
Lawyers aren’t stupid, and I don’t blame them for walking away from these matters. I just wish that they’d be more upfront about the unlikelihood of this matter succeeding.
And I also understand why lawyers want $20k retainers and all invoices paid on a monthly basis. No one is going to take a matter like this on contingency. You’d have to be insane. Especially when the Government of Canada can throw unlimited tax dollars at this case.
That’s it for now.
In the next blog post I’m going to get around to dealing with the media.
Okay, so I haven’t been updating this blog as frequently as I used to, and there are reasons for that.
We’ll have to wait and see.
But this should get interesting this time around.
On to other news.
It looks as if the Canadian Armed Forces have yet another little shit storm brewing on the horizon.
It seems that Gary Walbourne, the former Canadian Forces Ombudsman, is testifying before the Standing Committee on National Defence that he told the Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan, about the allegations of sexual misconduct that had been brought against former Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance.
It seems that Harjit didn’t want his sensibilities offended by the allegations and ignored the allegations which meant that the Canadian Forces Ombudsman couldn’t review the matter.
And as the Minister of National Defence, Harjit is technically the top cop in the Canadian Forces. By way of the chain of command Harjit has control over the Chief of Defence Staff, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, the Provost Marshal, and the various commanding officers of the CFNIS.
When I first met with Harjit Sajjan back in February of 2016, I thought that the meeting would be an eye opener for Sajjan. After all, he seemed to be the no-nonsense law and order kind. He was a police officer with the Vancouver Police Department before he joined the Canadian Armed Forces.
The meeting though quickly went off the rails. At the start of the meeting he wanted me to understand that he was meeting with me as the Member of Parliament for Vancouver South and not as the Minister of National Defence. At the time I didn’t understand why he was so intent on making this clear to me. But there would have been legal ramifications if he were to have met with me in his role as the Minister of National Defence. This I wouldn’t learn until a few years later.
I discussed the issue of Captain Father Angus McRae and McRae’s altar boy P.S. and the fact that I had received what amounted to be “conversion therapy ” at the hands of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke. Harjit Sajjan didn’t care. During our 15 minute meeting he interrupted me and asked me what my “angle was” and “what game was I playing”.
Between the meeting on February 6th, 2016 and the current day, I have asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to review the 1980 CFSIU investigation. Yes, the 1980 CFSIU investigation is well beyond the mandate of the Military Police Complaints Commission, however it is not beyond the mandate of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman. The Minister of National Defence just has to ask the Ombudsman to investigate. This would be the same as when then Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman in 2013 to investigate the 1974 CFB Valcartier grenade incident that killed 6 children and injured over 100 more.
Yet Harjit Sajjan has refused to request the Ombudsman to review the 1980 CFSIU investigation of Captain Angus McRae and his altar boy P.S..
I have absolutely no doubt in mind that had Harjit Sajjan been the Minister of National Defence in 2013, he would have not allowed the Ombudsman to review the 1974 CFB Valcartier grenade incident.
Harjit is a soldier’s soldier.
Harjit is beholden to the military and to no one else.
Harjit will not allow anything to potentially darken the reputation of the military.
I’m just thankful that the CFB Valcartier grenade incident investigation was undertaken prior to Harjit’s tenure.
I’m also thankful that the Colonel Russell Williams matter occurred prior to Harjit’s tenure.
And I’m also thankful that Madame Marie Deschamps was tasked with conducting her review prior to Harjit’s tenure.
Sadly I don’t think that Harjit is going to lose his ministerial position no matter how badly he deserves to be punished for this appalling coverup.
Justin Trudeau won’t do it. Justin doesn’t have the power or the will to stand up to a person like Harjit.
Tossing Harjit out of his ministerial position would cost the Liberal party of Canada too many votes.
So, we’re stuck with Harjit for the foreseeable future.
And we’re also stuck with a man who places his pride in the military above all else.
We’re stuck with a man who is willing to allow the old military ways of sweeping everything under the rug to become the new way of conducting business.
And this is a shame after so many years of progress.
Back in November of 2020, the Military Police Complaints Commission released their final report of their review of the 2015 through 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754.
Although it was just a review, and although the review had to be conducted as per rules that the Canadian Armed Forces shaped, the MPCC did find that the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal did err when it relied upon the decision of the Alberta Crown as meaning that no crime had been committed. The Crown had opined that there was insufficient evidence to lay charges. The Crown made no determination on the guilt or innocence or P.S..
The MPCC was of the opinion that there was ample evidence to indicate that a crime had been committed.
Generally, the Crown has a very high bar for determining whether or not to pursue charges in court. This is because the accused stands to lose their personal freedom and suffer penalties and sanctions administered by the courts.
However, just because this bar is set high doesn’t mean that the accused is innocent.
And that was one of the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission.
There had been crimes committed.
But, for some reason when dealing with the outside civilian agency the CFNIS had chosen to use the opinion of the Alberta Crown and not its own opinion in determining if a crime had been committed.
I think this refusal to go on record and state that crimes had occurred comes down to not wanting to expose the Minister of National Defence to civil actions and the resultant public humiliation that the Canadian Forces knew that over 25 children had been sexually abused on a secure defence establishment by an officer of the Regular Forces and instead in 1980 set about to sweep everything under the rug and hide it from the public eye by a very questionable publication ban.
The MPCC recommended that the Provost Marshal supply more documentation from the investigation to the outside civilian agency that was reviewing this matter on my behalf.
Upon receipt of these documents, the outside civilian review agency concluded that I had in fact been the victim of multiple sexual assaults by multiple perpetrators and that these assaults had in fact caused psychological issues as indicated by my Alberta social service Foster Care records. These were the records that were submitted to the CFNIS in August of 2011, but which the CFNIS completely ignored for the most part as they directly conflicted with the statement that my father had given (coerced, coached, or otherwise) to the CFNIS in June of 2011.
Relying on the opinion of the Provincial Crown is apparently nothing new for the Canadian Forces military police.
A former crown prosecutor from New Brunswick who had declined to recommend charges against 5 soldiers from CFB Gagetown who had raped a mentally challenged spouse of a service member remarked that the military police did this as a way of shifting the blame to the Crown for the failure to prosecute.
Why did the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal rely so heavily upon the Alberta Crown report? Was this due to a desire for a “softball” investigation that wouldn’t break any agreement between P.S. and the Minister of National Defence?
That’s beyond the scope of the MPCC. The MPCC cannot, by its enabling legislation, review interference complaints unless the complaints are made by CFNIS investigators directly involved with a particular investigation. As the MPCC indicated in its own submission to the “2nd Independent Review of Amendments Made to the National Defence Act” which was published in 2011, the CFNIS investigators may not even be aware that interference has occurred in their investigation if that interference happens high enough up the chain of command.
And is a superior really interfering with an investigation if they are issuing “lawful commands” that their subordinates are legally bound by the National Defence Act to obey?
CFNIS investigators do not “own” their investigation. They cannot make their own decisions and their own determinations. Everything they do must be approved by the Chain of Command.
In the 2015 to 2018 portion of the CFNIS investigation into my complaint against P.S., even though the Crime Stoppers appeal had generated numerous other tips which resulted in other victims coming forward, the CFNIS chain of command made the decision that each complaint had to stand on its own and that none of the complaints would be used to strengthen the other complaints.
Someone involved with the CFNIS decided that there was far too much risk in presenting a strong case to the Alberta Crown.
In 2020, the CFNIS undertook the investigation into my complaint that P.S. had supplied me for sexual purposes to a man at the base swimming pool in the period of time between having been caught in the bedroom of P.S. and the subsequent house fire at the residence of P.S.. I had made mention of this man previously during the 2011-5754 investigation. Because of paperwork related to the 1980 investigation of Captain McRae released to me under the Access to Information legislation in 2019, I became aware of a very likely possibility of who this man was so I decided to make a formal complaint.
In January I was contacted by the CFNIS investigator handling my case. He said that he was making arrangements with the Vancouver Police Department for me to view police line-up photographs to see if I could identify the man that P.S. had supplied me to. Then suddenly a week ago this investigator contacted me and said that his superiors had decided to scrub the photographs and that they were working on other possible ways for me to identify this man.
I know for sure that the CFNIS are not simply going to pay Mr.P.S. a visit and ask him the name of the man. So I can only wonder how they intend for me to identify this man.
So again, it’s not the CFNIS investigator the runs the investigation, it’s the CFNIS chain of command and the Provost Marshal chain of command that run the investigations.
Under the National Defence Act, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff has the right to issue guidelines and instructions for any investigation undertaken by the CFNIS and that although these instructions are to be made public, these instructions do not have to be made public of the Provost Marshal decides against releasing them.
The Vice Chief of Defence Staff must obey the lawful commands of the Chief of Defence Staff.
The Chief of Defence Staff must obey the Minister of National Defence.
The office of the Minister of National Defence is civilly liable for the actions of any person subject to the Code of Service Discipline while that person is on a Defence Establishment.
This isn’t the first rodeo for the Canadian Armed Forces.
They have a massive legal department.
They also have the benefit of the Department of Justice.
The Canadian Forces have legislation on their side that says that they have very little if any responsibility for civilians injured on Defence Establishment.
About the only thing that would circumvent that implied immunity to civil action would be criminal charges connected directly to a person who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
In the case of P.S., that person was Captain Father Angus McRae. Under Canadian law at the time, McRae would have been fully responsible for the delinquency of P.S.
In the case of the man at the base swimming pool, I’m pretty sure that this man was a major in the Canadian Forces at the time. He went on to have his own legal problems involving sexual relations with underage persons.
If the Canadian Forces are unable to find a criminal connection between myself and P.S. or myself and the man at the base swimming pool, the odds on me ever being able to launch a successful civil action against the Minister of National Defence are slim to none.
Minister of National Defence -> Chief of Defence Staff -> Vice Chief of Defence Staff -> Provost Marshal -> Commander of the CFNIS -> Divisional Commander CFNIS -> CFNIS investigator.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
The TV news media, they have an audience.
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.
One thing that has struck me as odd is the editing that was applied to a document that formed part of the briefing that was sent to the Alberta Crown, first by Sgt. Hancock in 2011, and then by Sgt. Tenaschuk in 2018.
Back in 2011, the CFNIS attempted to contact P.S. though his father. But retired Sgt. J.S. told the CFNIS that he was not going to allow the CFNIS to interview his son and that his son had already paid for “things he did 20 to 30 years ago”
Well, lo and behold, P.S. did in fact contact the CFNIS of his own volition.
P.S. called Sgt. Hancock on August 9th, 2011.
P.S. said that he wasn’t going to participate in the investigation and that “anything he had been involved with as a youth had already been handled by the military” and that if charges were brought against him “a lawyer would handle that”
I don’t know about you, but if I was an investigator and a suspect said this to me, I think I’d want to investigate this a little further.
What I find odd and peculiar is that when Sgt. Hancock submitted his brief to the Alberta Crown in 2011, either he or one of his superiors edited the SAMPIS record of the telephone conversation that Sgt. Hancock had with P.S.
The question is, who elected to remove the potion “anything he had been involved in as a youth had already been handled by the military”
What was P.S. “involved in as a youth”
How did the military “handle it”?
As we know, the Minister of National Defence settled out of court with P.S. in November of 2008. And I know from talking directly to P.S. in July of 2015 that there was an “agreement” that went along with this settlement.
Oddly enough, what was passed on to the Alberta Crown was the opinion of the CFNIS investigators that I frequently changed jobs, had a very unstable employment history, was constanly in trouble at school, only called my father when I needed money, and that I was a societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the Canadian Armed Forces.
There was no mention of the fact that I was in foster care, or that my family was a social services magnet from one side of the country to the other with “parental concerns” being a constant factor for our involvement with social services, or that my father didn’t really live with us on CFB Namao due to his frequent absences due to training exercises.
Also missing from the crown brief was the fact that P.S. molested an 8 year old boy on a Canadian Forces Base in Manitoba in 1984 and that P.S. had been kicked out of his family’s PMQ on CFB Edmonton in the spring of 1985 for having molested a 9 year old boy on CFB Namao.
Sure, as some with more familiarity with the criminal justice system may say, P.S. having numerous convictions for sexual assaults involving children doesn’t automatically prove that he molested me, my brother, or the four other children I saw him molest. But it does prove that he does in fact have a predilection for committing sexual acts with children. This should have intensified the investigation into P.S., this should not have resulted in Warrant Officer Blair Hart telling the RCMP that my case was likely to go nowhere due to a lack of evidence.
It’s almost as if the CFNIS had an agenda. An agenda that didn’t involve bringing charges against a multi-time convicted child molester who just happened to reach an out of court settlement with the Minister of National Defence in November of 2008.
In other words, the CFNIS had a mandate, and this mandate didn’t involve waking up a sleeping giant from the 1980s which could possibly expose the Minister of National Defence to the potential of multiple civil actions from those who as children had been victims of P.S. and Captain Father Angus McRae.
As I’ve said previously, I honestly don’t remember anything about what occured during the visits to the rectory after the “sickly sweet grape juice”.
I remember the rectal bleeding, but I always attributed that to P.S..
On May 3rd, 2011 CFNIS investigator Sgt. Christian Cyr contacted me. He initially left a message. After checking his message, I returned his phone call.
It was during this phone call that Sgt. Cyr let slip the fact that Captain McRae had been arrested, charged, and convicted of child molestation.
I literally dropped my cellphone when he said this. I was in shock for a while before I picked up my phone and continued the conversation.
I told Sgt. Cyr about the visits, about how I never remembered anything after the “sickly sweet grape juice” and how the time P.S., myself, and one of the other kids P.S. was abusing vandalized the base chapel now made sense.
Sgt. Cyr had also been creative with what I had told him about the visits to the chapel. I told Sgt. Cyr that I never remembered anything after the “sickly sweet grape juice”. Sgt. Cyr wrote in his SAMPIS occurrence report that “Mr. Bees remembers going to the chapel with P.S., but that nothing ever happened”. That’s not what I said.
Later that evening I would send Sgt Cyr an email message detailing a little more about what I remembered about McRae.
I would discover much to my horror during my application for judicial review that Sgt. Cyr excluded all of the emails I sent him that evening detailing everything that I could remember about Captain McRae.
I would also discover during my judicial review that Sgt. Cyr “forgot” about asking me about Captain McRae.
Why didn’t I raise the issue of the missing emails during the MPCC review? That’s not how it works.
During an MPCC review, you are not given any access to any of the investigation documents, nor are you given access to any of the documentation that the Provost Marshal supplied to the MPCC.
During an MPCC review, you are literally flying blind.
I will touch on the MPCC in a future posting.
Except, even though Sgt. Cyr excluded all of my emails, he did coincidentally do a Google search for “CFB Namao Molesting Priest”, which is the exact same search string I mentioned in my email the previous day to him.
Also, the next morning were a pair of phone calls involving Sgt. Cyr.
I made the first call to Sgt. Cyr at 07:20.
Sgt. Cyr made a call back to me at 08:18.
Neither of these telephone calls show up in Sgt. Cyr’s occurrence reports or log books. It’s like they just didn’t happen.
During the first call @ 07:20, Sgt. Cyr and I talked about the activities in the chapel, how the visits occurred, and what would happen after the visits.
During the second call @ 08:18, Sgt Cyr said that he did some investigation and that the chapel that I had described to him was the “new” chapel and that the original chapel which was on the base in 1980 was in a different location. Sgt. Cyr also said that there never were any living quarters attached to the chapel, that the chaplain always lived off base.
Now, so far as the chapel goes, the chapel that I indicated in the email to Sgt. Cyr was built in 1956. The chapel also had living quarters right up until 1989 when the living quarters were converted into community space. This I know as I received the blue prints for Our Lady of Loretto Chapel via an access to information request that I had submitted to DND.
Also, to further back up my claim that I had indicated the correct chapel to Sgt. Cyr, on June 25th 2001 the Assistant Judge Advocate General on CFB Edmonton faxed a copy of a map to a claims analyst. On this map the Asst. JAG indicated the RC Chapel. This was as a result of P.S. initiating his action against the Minister of National Defence in the Court of Queens Bench in Edmonton, AB.
How did Sgt. Cyr conclude that being drugged and not remembering anything happening was the same thing as nothing actually happening?
Or, did Sgt. Cyr even write that?
A few things of interest were discovered during the Fynes Public Interest Hearing.
First it was discovered that CFNIS investigators don’t really run their own investigations. The Chain of Command has a surprising amount of say during an investigation. Section 83 of the National Defence Act pretty well ensures that this will occur.
Then it was also discovered that superior officers had re-written a report that was submitted by a CFNIS investigator and that this investigator was told to apply his signature to the new report.
Finally, it was discovered during the Fynes Public Interest hearing that SAMPIS, the military police electronic record system, is not as secure as it should be. Anyone can go into SAMPIS and change or edit entries, and there will be no record of the changes made. Only the edited document remains.
Yes, Sgt. Cyr kept written notes in his notebook. But, a notebook is just that. It’s a notebook. There are no third party verifiable time stamps applied to any of the entries in the notebook. In fact, there’s nothing in his notebook to indicate when exactly his notebook was being filled in.
And this is one thing that I noticed about the notebooks of all of the CFNIS investigators. They’re immaculate. They sure don’t look like they’re being used “on the fly” to record notes and records during an investigation.
If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that it’s more than likely that the investigators with the CFNIS keep two sets of written notes. The “rough” notes contain the actual “real time” notes and records of the investigation. The “final” notes are the sanitized and approved notes that are allowed to be put into them.
When Sgt. Cyr was interviewed by the MPCC, he made a very curious statement to the MPCC. It must be remembered that all statements given to the MPCC are not taken under oath. Sgt. Cyr claimed that he flew out to Victoria, BC and met with me in person.
I’ve never met Sgt. Cyr before in my life. I’ve talked to him on the telephone a few times, but that’s it. I’ve never met him or anyone else from the Canadian Forces in Victoria. But, due to the manner in which the MPCC review works, I was completely unaware of this statement during the MPCC review and therefore I was unable to contest this statement.
If you ever wanted to know why no one has ever really paid attention to child sexual abuse on the various Canadian Armed Forces bases, it’s because the Canadian Armed Forces are good at hiding and obscuring issues.
A couple of years ago I filed an Access to Information to the Department of National Defence. I was looking for copies of any documents or emails between myself and a particular person.
What I received in response blew me away.
It was a copy of an email between Denis Paradis and William Bain of the Ministerial Correspondence Unit.
Paradis was requesting that Bain attach a copy of an email between the Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, and the Deputy Judge Advocate General, Major Zenon Drebot, to my file.
Denis Paradis is requesting that my file be encrypted, and the subject matter of my file be changed in name to “Concerns with the CAF’.
This would pose sigificant problems to anyone who was ever searching for the existence of my paperwork.
For example, if a media wonk was to submit a request to DND to see if the Minister of National Defence has ever dealt with subjects such as “child sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces”, their request would come back with negative results as the Ministerial Correspondence Unit changed the subject name of my correspondence.
What’s stopping a media wonk from requesting copies of any documents that mention “Concerns with the CAF”?
Well, they’d never get my files as my files are encrypted. And any files they do get might run the gamut from disgruntled vets upset about their pensions to fishers worried about the impact of our submarines on the cod stocks. Concerns with the CAF might yield so many results that DND would be able justifiably turn this request down due to the amount of time to collect all of the results.
I was able to request a copy of the “encrypted files” because I specifically knew they existed and I knew who created the “encrypted files”. The file contains copies of letters that I had sent to the Chief of Defence Staff and the Minister of National Defence. The file also contains 8 pages of documents redacted in their entirety due to Section 27 of the Privacy act. Numerous sections redacted due to solicitor / client privilege. And a whole bunch of back and forth between the Judge Advocate General, the Chief of Defence Staff, and the Minister of National Defence.
Am I being paranoid?
Nope. Not in the slightest.
A high ranking officer was found during the recent fiasco involving the former Vice Chief of Defence Staff Vice-Admiral Mark Norman to have avoided using Mark Norman’s name on documents and internal correspondence in order to thwart access to information requests and discovery requests.
During the Mark Norman pre-trial, it was discovered during the examination of a DND employee that when this employee went to their commander to fulfil an access to information request for documents relating to Mark Norman, the commander told their subordinate “Don’t worry, this isn’t our first rodeo. We made sure we never used his name. Send back nil return”
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/witness-at-mark-norman-hearing-alleges-dnd-attempts-to-keep-files-hidden-from-public-view
It is very apparent that DND is adept at the art of hiding information. And I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that they actively use their skills to hide a lot of embarrassing issues from the public eye.
Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces 