Okay, today (November 12, 2021) I received an email from the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service Victim Services coordinator.
Turns out that the CFNIS is handing my case over to the civilian police after the edict from the new Minister of National Defence on November 4th, 2021.
This is exactly 10 years to the date that the CFNIS on November 4th, 2011 told me in a telephone call that the CFNIS couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that the person that I had accused of sexually assaulting me and my brother was capable of committing the crimes I had accused him of.
In 2020 the MPCC would lay bare the fact that the CFNIS had actually established that the accusations I had made were founded.
There was one caveat in the email. The civilian police may chose to hand the matter back to the CFNIS.
Regardless, this is a perfect raspberry for all of those that said that military crimes could not be investigated or tried in the military justice system.
The military justice system has never had sole jurisdiction over criminal code matters. What we had though was a chain of command that was more than happy to “wash the laundry” in house and present a complete bullshit façade to the general public that life on base was just like Mayberry.
I wonder how many people who were sexually abused on base as military dependents will be willing to come forward now that they’re no longer in the grips of the CFNIS and the military police.
This case is related to the man in the sauna at the base recreation centre.
In the days after I had been caught being buggered by P.S. but before the house fire at P.S.’s house on June 23, 1980 P.S. had found me in the change room at the base swimming pool.
He escorted me over to the sauna. In the sauna was a man in his mid to late 40’s if not early ’50s. P.S. had somehow promised this man that I would perform oral sex on him. P.S., always had a position of authority over me. P.S. wasn’t afraid to use physical violence to get what he wanted. He was an extremely angry teenager. I didn’t dare refuse. I performed oral sex on the man. I would have been 8 at the time. P.S. was just shy of his 15th birthday at the time. The man stopped me right before he ejaculated. I don’t know why he stopped me before he ejaculated. I’ve got some ideas. Anyways……..
I’ve got some ideas as to who this man may have been. If he is who I think he might have been, this man would have been a Major in the Canadian Forces.
This man has charges related to the sexual abuse of other children on different Canadian Forces Bases, and he was on Canadian Forces Base Namao during the Captain McRae matter in June and July of 1980.
The Minister of National Defence, the Chief of Defence Staff, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, and the Provost Marshal would have their obvious reasons for not being able to find enough evidence against the person I had accused. But will the civilian police have any better luck seeing as how the civilian police would have to go through the military to get pertinent records and documents.
And there’s still the issue presented by the two historical flaws in the pre-1998 National Defence Act, namely the Summary Investigation flaw, and the 3-year-time-bar.
I received a telephone call from one of my lawyers today.
This one is for my case involving Earl Ray Stevens.
My lawyer informed me that the Ontario Crown is taking a little longer than promised to release their records to my lawyer. The Crown is telling my lawyer that the police are taking longer than they should in handing their investigation file over to the Ontario Crown.
My lawyer has said that the counsel for the defendants have agreed to proceed to discovery without the Crown documents.
I really don’t know at this point how this case will work out.
Sure, Earl wasn’t found guilty in a court of law. But both the Toronto Police Service and the Ontario Crown thought that the case was strong enough to proceed to trial. Even the justice presiding over the preliminary hearing thought that this case was strong enough to go to trial.
Earl died of bladder cancer before the trial could commence.
Earl was a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Earl was very smooth and Earl knew what he was doing. One can only wonder how many children Earl molested on the various Canadian Forces Bases while he was enlisted.
Earl’s career in the Canadian Forces more than likely explains why he knew that I would be terrified if either my father or the military police found out what I was doing with Earl and why Earl was able to use this as leverage to get me to keep my mouth shut about what he was doing. He knew from his time in the Canadian Forces that no military dependent would want anyone to know that they were “gay” or “homosexual”.
I wonder how many other military dependent children Earl was able to abuse in silence by threatening them with the revelation of their “secret”.
On another note I also received an email from the victim services coordinator with the CFNIS Western Region. They inform me that the investigation into the “man in the sauna” is still ongoing.
It’ll be interesting to see how this one works out.
The military police are taking such a trashing in the public eye these days. The military police and the CFNIS just don’t seem to be able to get convictions on anything.
The primary witness in this investigation is P.S., the babysitter from CFNIS investigation 2011-5754. The investigation which the CFNIS actually determined was “Founded – Not Cleared”.
The Military Police Complaints Commission in their final report that was released in 2020 stated that the CFNIS knew in 2011 that the charges against P.S. were founded.
Why the CFNIS told me in 2011 that they couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes I had accused him of will forever be a mystery. I have some plausible ideas.
How willing P.S. will be to talk to the CFNIS in this matter is anyone’s guess. And how willing the CFNIS will be to push P.S. to talk is again anyone’s guess. P.S. provided me to the man in the sauna. P.S. was the only witness to what had happened. And P.S. obviously knew what the man in the sauna was going to want from me.
At this time I only have a guess as to who the man in the sauna was. I know it wasn’t Captain McRae. There was an officer of the Canadian Forces who had been sent out from Ottawa to assist Captain McRae with McRae’s affairs during the lead up to his court martial. This officer, who was a major at the time, had been charged in the 2010s with molesting a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974. This is the same man, who after he retired from the Canadian Forces, had made a cash settlement with a family in Ontario for having improper sexual relations with a 16 year old boy.
Again, the major flaw with this whole investigation is that if it turns out that the man in the sauna was an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces and if this officer was responsible for directing P.S. to bring me to the sauna, a sauna that was owned by the Canadian Forces and was located on a secure Defence Establishment, to perform oral sex on this man, this would expose the Minister of National Defence to civil actions for the actions and behaviours of their officer.
Two problems exist with this scenario though.
First is that the 3-year-time-bar which existed in the National Defence Act prior to 1998 would prevent the Canadian Forces from being able to charge this man with Gross Indecency or Indecent Assault.
Second, the Minister of National Defence is in fact the “Chief of Police” as the minister via the Vice Chief of Defence Staff can direct any CFNIS investigation. The Supreme Court of Canada and the Military Police Complaints Commission have both said that this is improper. The Supreme Court of Canada has specifically ruled that it is improper for a police agency to conduct police investigations that could subject its parent agency to civil actions based on the outcome of the police investigation. This is why almost every police agency in Canada will always call in an outside police agency to conduct investigations when it suspects its own officers of serious wrongdoing.
I’ve often wondered if the fact that I am male has a had an impact on how my abuse at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae has been viewed by the authorities.
Society expects girls and women to be the victims of sexual assault.
Society also expects that boys and men will be the perpetrators of sexual assault.
Things get really turned upside down when boys or men are the victims of sexual assault.
And things really get turned upside down when males are the victims of other males.
When I was receiving my counselling from Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke the area of concern wasn’t so much that I had been sexually abused but was that I had been caught having sex with another boy.
In the aftermath of being caught in P.S.’s bedroom I had often wondered if I would have gotten in trouble if I had been a girl instead of a boy. Even at age 8 I understood the gender bias that existed.
When I used to swap clothes with Megan on CFB Griesbach, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a girl. It’s just that I couldn’t understand why boys couldn’t wear dresses. I’d like to think that I was ahead of the curve with understanding that artificial society enforced gender roles were harmful and toxic. But more than likely it was just that I couldn’t understand why it was wrong for boys to wear dresses. And still no one has been able to explain this to me.
I remember girls on base who got touched by same age boys during episodes of “doctor”. The father of the girl would often unleash a can of whoop-ass on the boy who touched his daughter. The father of the boy would often give his son an “understanding wink” as if to say “good job son!”. The daughter never received any type of admonishment for the game of doctor as there was no way possible that the girl could have instigated it. But again, that’s just one of society’s biases, “girls are weak and can only be victims, boys are strong and can only be perpetrators”.
While living on CFB Griesbach I had developed feelings for a boy my age. He lived two doors down from me in PMQ #68. Nothing sexual at all. But we did kiss one day. His father was furious. Mine was even more so telling me that if he ever heard reports from another parent on base that I had kissed their son that he would “break my fucking neck” and that I would never have to worry about kissing another boy again.
Now, I realize that male-on-male child sexual abuse also existed out in the civilian world and that in the civilian world the victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse weren’t treated all that fairly. I still have a copy of an actual educational film from the ’60s called “Boys Beware” in which a teenage boy is groomed by a hebephile and coerced into sex. The hebephile is arrested and the boy is sentenced to juvenile detention. But there was possibly something else at play in the Canadian Armed Forces.
In 2014 when the French magazine L’actualité published its bombshell stories about sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces, one of the stories it ran was about male-on-male sexual assault. The writer of the article was told that male-on-male sexual assault in the military was all about control, humiliation, and punishment, and not about sexual gratification.
Is this why male-on-male sexual abuse was not taken all that serious in the Canadian Armed Forces? Obviously the victim must have done something wrong and deserved to be sexually abused, right? Don’t forget, the men sexually abusing other members of the Canadian Forces often had children at home. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other male members, how likely were they to take the sexual abuse of their sons as a serious offence. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other members, how likely were they to abuse their own children as a form of punishment or to exert control over an out of control child?
Let’s say that a soldier of the Canadian Forces had an out of control teenage boy at home, and if this member of the Canadian Forces had been involved with episodes of male-on-male sexual abuse in the military as a form of humiliation or punishment, would it be feasible that this member might also make use of male-on-male sexual abuse in an attempt to reign his son in and bring his son under control?
Oddly, when Maclean’s ran the English versions of the L’Actulaite stories they dropped the entire article about male-on-male sexual assault. Is French society that much more advanced that it can handle topics like male-on-male sexual abuse? Are the Anglophones of such delicate sensibilities that Maclean’s was worried about causing their English readers to faint, and swoon, and need PTSD counselling?
Not much to say here, other than I try to describe the difference between suicide, physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, and medical assistance in dying.
Okay, so I’m going to talk to the best of my abilities about what the differences between Suicide, Physician Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia, and Medical Assistance in Dying are. There really are no clear definitions used universally and some terms are used solely to stigmatize medical assistance in dying.
Suicide is an act of desperation. Suicide is the act of a mind that is so overwhelmed with emotions that it cannot think straight. If you’ve never suffered from major depression you’ll never know how tempting suicide is. Suicide is one of those things that no one ever talks about. As a society, we’re very hush-hush about this to the point that we like to pretend that it doesn’t exist. And if society does acknowledge the existence of suicide society often talks about how crazy the person was that committed suicide and how selfish they were and how much pain and suffering they selfishly inflicted upon others.
Suicide is often not planned for and as such family members, relatives, friends and co-workers can often be left devastated. Family members are often left wondering why their loved one committed suicide and if there were any signs they missed and if there was something they could have done. Suicide often has impacts on others as well such as the landlord or property owner that finds the body. The first responders and bystanders who may have witnessed the suicide will be affected.
How many suicides are there every year? This table is from the BC Coroner’s service.
6,102 people successfully committed suicide in the ten year period starting in 2008. I don’t remember hearing a single news story about these people, do you? Society again thinks that by not talking about suicide that suicide will just simply disappear.
What are the common methods of suicide?
When was the last time you heard of a suicide on the Skytrain? Next time, pay attention to the “Medical Emergency” announcement. Yet between 2008 and 2018 there were 32 successful suicides on the Skytrain. The most prevalent method of suicide is the rather barbaric method of hanging. Let’s be honest, self hanging is NOT the same as hanging used as execution. There is very little chance that the person using hanging as a method will know how to do the proper calculations to ensure a quick death.
And it should go without saying, but committing suicide by Skytrain or railway is not a guaranteed way to go. More often than not you will survive with horrific injuries that will haunt you for the rest of your life.
What is often not discussed is the number of suicide attempts per year. The only stats I can find say that in Canada on any given day 275 people attempt suicide. That’s over 100,000 people per year.
I am not a neurologist, but it’s safe to say that the human brain is fragile and can easily be damaged and not just by physical trauma. The human brain can easily be damaged by traumatic experiences. Because the human brain relies on chemicals to transmit and receive signals any disruptions to these chemicals can cause long term effects. The longer a person suffers from untreated major depression and severe anxiety the more profound the damage becomes.
No amount of telling a depressed person to not be sad or instead to think happy thoughts will fix brain damage caused by trauma. And in the end, no amount of medication of therapy will reverse the psychological damage caused by trauma.
However, the events leading up to suicide tend to be very short term problems that could possibly be dealt with if the person committing suicide believed that they had someone to listen to them.
Physician Assisted Suicide.
Physician assisted suicide is a term that fell out of favour just as quickly as it entered the national vocabulary. When a person with an incurable medical condition wishes to end their life so as not to prolong their needless suffering, they are not committing suicide. And as such, the physician supplying the medication is not assisting in a suicide.
Euthanasia.
Euthanasia is a term for when a person, typically a doctor, uses medications to end the life of a patient typically without the consent of the patient. Euthanasia is pretty well illegal just about everywhere in the world. The only place that anything close to Euthanasia is practiced in on death row when prisoners are executed.
As much as I am in favour of any mentally competent adult, and children in very strictly controlled circumstances, ending their life for any medical or psychological issue, I don’t think that physicians should be able to decide on their own, or the next of kin for that matter, should be allowed to end the life of another person without very careful consideration from the courts.
Medical Assistance in Dying.
M.A.i.D. is the term for when a person applies to use medications prescribed for the sole purpose of dying. As I’ve said before, M.A.i.D. is something that has to be applied for, and it has to be planned for. When I apply for M.A.i.D. I can promise you that there will be a battery of tests that I will have to go through. It will not be as simple as me just going to my doctor and asking for a note.
Unlike suicide, almost every detail of M.A.i.D. is planned out from start to finish.
And unlike suicide, the medications used will ensure a proper death and not just an attempt.
If the proper drugs are used in the proper dosages the person undergoing the procedure will not feel pain and will not even be aware of their death.
And because M.A.i.D. is always undertaken with a sound, rational, and lucid mind, the person undergoing the procedure can stop the procedure at any time right up until the loss of consciousness. For obvious reasons you can’t withdraw your consent once the Propofol hits your brain.
And yes, during the entire M.A.i.D. process from application to the final day, the person electing to undergo the procedure will be frequently asked if they wish to continue forth or if they want to abandon the procedure.
The where, when, and how will be scheduled like clockwork. There will be no corpse for an unsuspecting landlord or relative to discover. Arrangements are typically made for the disposal of the body after the procedure. There will be no curious absence from work. People who need to be informed will be informed. And the answers as to why will be available to anyone who asks.
Why? Why do you want to kill yourself.
I prefer the term “going to sleep”. Kill implies violence. I’m just going to sleep. A sleep like the 18,250 sleeps that I’ve gone through in my life. Just that this is a sleep that I will never rouse from.
For 42 years now I’ve had to deal with the fallout from CFB Namao. What happened on that base is not something that one can simply get over and forget about. Then there’s the after effects of being swept up in the desire of the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces to keep the actions of P.S. and Captain McRae under wraps least the Canadian public discover what happened.
The Canadian Forces determined that my mental health and my mental wellbeing were sacrificial to the greater cause. Whether or not you like to admit it, the Canadian Forces chain of command sentenced me to death in 1980.
For 42 years I lived with and internalized major depression, severe anxiety, gender and orientation confusion, the inability to form friendships, the inability to form intimate relationships, the inability to enjoy life.
I’m 50 years old now. Seriously, I’m now fifty as I type this out. I honestly never thought that I would live to see this milestone.
I am very tired. I’ve fought the depression and the anxiety for as long as I could. I’ve hidden the depression and anxiety with every fibre in my body. I’ve tried my hardest to appear normal. But I am damaged. To say that I am not damaged is to minimize what occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao when I was 7 to 8-1/2. To say that I am not damaged is to minimize my mistreatment at the hands of Captain Terry Totzke from age 9 to 11-1/2. To say that I am not damaged is to overlook the fact that I was supposed to have been institutionalized due to how bad my mental health had deteriorated by the time I was 11 years old.
I am damaged due to the wilful neglect of others. I am damaged due to the fact that others kept me from receiving timely counselling, therapy, and medication.
The damage was allowed to fester untreated and unmanaged for almost 42 years now.
There is no fixing this damage.
Just because I no longer cry myself to sleep at night doesn’t mean that this damage doesn’t affect me anymore. It just means that I’ve run out of tears to cry and I am almost completely dead on the inside.
The time for “fixing” me was in 1980. Not 2021.
My entire life was wasted because DND and the CF had a secret to hide.
I am actually at peace with myself now.
The more I think about how close I am to the end and how peaceful the transition from living to dead will be I become filled with a feeling of serenity. It’s actually a beautiful peaceful feeling.
I have a lot of unwanted people living in my skull, and they won’t voluntarily leave. They need to be forcefully evicted. P.S.; Captain Father Angus McRae; The man in the sauna; Captain Terry Totzke; My father, Mcpl Richard Wayne Gill; The other victims of P.S. that I keep seeing him abuse over and over; Earl Ray Stevens; And many others.
When I go to sleep they’ll never bother me again.
When I go to sleep my major depression and my severe anxiety will never trouble me again.
When I go to sleep I will never wake up in the middle of the night due to horrific dreams.
When I go to sleep I will never again grind my teeth down to nothing.
When I go to sleep I will never be crushed under the weight of a severe anxiety attack.
When I go to sleep my gender and orientation issues will never bother me again.
When I go to sleep all I will ever know is silence.
And after the life that I’ve been through never ending silence is fine by me.
