One of the matters that help the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence in this matter is the difficulty in tracking down all of the victims of McRae and the babysitter.
Captain McRae was on Canadian Forces Base Kingston, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, Canadian Forces Station Holberg, and finally Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Captain McRae spent about 2 years on each defence establishment.
In each of those two year periods it would be very difficult to guesstimate how many children McRae had diddled, fondled, penetrated, performed oral sex on, and received oral sex from.
And this problem isn’t related to Captain McRae moving from base to base.
It’s that his victims would also move from bases to base.
We had no choice where we lived. We followed our serving parents.
So for example when McRae was posted to CFB Namao in August of 1978 it obvious that he went to work right away having sex with children on the base.
He wasn’t investigated until May of 1980.
That means that Captain McRae was on the base during a posting season, which was typically June to September.
Between June and September of 1979, how many children that Captain McRae had sexually assaulted from August of 1978 until August of 1979 were posted off to different bases across Canada before the investigation of Captain McRae commenced in May of 1980.
Don’t forget, Captain McRae was the master of getting children intoxicated with alcohol. He admitted in his court martial to giving children beer or wine and then fooling around with them in the bedroom of the rectory.
And Captain McRae was smart. At least in my case he was. I don’t remember it being Captain McRae giving me the “sickly sweet grape juice”. It was always the babysitter giving me the sickly sweet grape juice whenever he took me over to visit with Captain McRae.
Now, this is where the postings to a different base take on a sinister aspect.
I had always remembered the babysitter giving me the sickly sweet grape juice as some sort of reward for providing him with sexual favours. And it stayed that way until May 3rd, 2011 when master corporal Christian Cyr asked me if I remembered anything about the base chaplain having been arrested for molesting children during the same period of time that I was accusing the babysitter of molesting me.
That’s 31 years later that I made the connection.
But what if I had stayed on that base longer?
What if the other victims of Captain McRae and the babysitter had stayed on that base?
What if we found each other and started talking amongst ourselves?
What if we waited until we all turned 18 and moved off base and then hired a lawyer back in 1989 / 1990. The same time that former Captain Father Angus McRae was being charged with child molestation in Scarborough, Ontario.
This would have made things really messy for the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence. Would have made things really sticky for the babysitter.
But, kids were posted to different bases. Kids who had memories of the babysitter or Captain McRae giving them sickly sweet grape juice. But with no knowledge of the whole child sexual abuse scandal on CFB Namao that transpired because parents complained about the babysitter’s sexual activities with their children.
And it’s not just CFB Namao. CFB Namao was just one base that Captain McRae was stationed at. And in two years Captain McRae was able to molest over 25 children.
How many children from CFB Kingston, CFB Portage La Prairie, or even CFS Holberg have these weird incoherent memories of a sickly sweet grape juice at the rectory of the base chapel?
How many former base brats from this time were between the ages of 4 and 8 and due to their youth at the time of the abuse, can’t fully remember the details.
How many of these kids, through normal military postings, ended up moving to many different bases over their adolescence and teenage years and were completely separated from the other victims?
More sinister though is this thought.
How many more child pedophiles did Captain McRae “activate” on the different bases.
Pedophilia is a sexual attraction to children that most research indicates forms in the brain before birth. Most pedophiles will never act upon their desires. However in the case of the babysitter, did Captain McRae’s abuse and grooming allow the babysitter to give into his desires?
If the babysitter’s attraction to children wasn’t genetic based, did Captain McRae’s abuse and grooming of the babysitter teach the babysitter that it was okay to have sex with young children?
Either way, we know that the babysitter went on to molest more children -across Canada-, while travelling with his father to different postings in different provinces.
How many other kids did Captain McRae abuse and groom whom then went on to abuse children on other Canadian Forces Bases and in the civilian population both before and after they moved off the bases after their 18th birthday.
I think that this is one of those reasons why the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence seem to do a lot of heavy work trying to keep military child sexual abuse survivors from receiving even the slightest modicum of recognition.
One can only wonder how many victims have come forward over the years only to either be stonewalled by the not-so-independent military police, or were slapped with an Non-Disclosure-Agreement in trade for a settlement.
Beeshive 