Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Where do I see myself in 10 years.
Hopefully not alive.
I truly and honestly cannot keep going on with this.
When Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health reasons becomes available on March 17th, 2027 I intend to be one of the first applicants.
Of course there’s still the chance that the disabled rights groups in this country will hijacked by the far right conservatives and manipulated to take to the streets in a thinly veiled astroturf campaign to stop the government from forcing the disabled to undergo M.A.i.D. in order to save costs.
The irony about the far right using the disabled is that the far right have never cared about this disabled, the marginalized, or the impoverished.
I’m tired.
Considering what I’ve gone through in this life, if I want to die in order to put an end to the daily misery and the overwhelming pointlessness, that should be a choice that I’m allowed to make.
And being as smart as I am is a double edged sword.
Sure, it’s kept me from a life of drugs on the street, but it’s also masked my suffering. People don’t see my daily suffering. They just see what I can do and they choose to ignore what I’ve gone through or what I am going through.
Justice?
“It was a different time back then”
“There were different mindsets”
“People’s attitudes were different”
Even in the modern day government entities such as the Department of Justice are trying to deal with me using the prevailing attitudes of the day from back then.
“The Canadian Forces are not responsible for the illegal activities of their service members”
“Military dependents such as spouses and children live in the military housing on military bases solely at their own risk”
From what I’ve seen of the Department of Justice both in my interactions with the DOJ in Federal Court in 2013 and my current day interactions with the DOJ, truth and justice are the least of their concerns. Their goal is to dodge and deflect and keep the government of Canada from owning up to the messes the National Defence Act created on military bases across Canada.
The DOJ knows from the records that I submitted in 2013 painted the 2011 CFNIS investigation into my complaints against the babysitter as a very flawed investigation, but the DOJ fought me tooth and nail.
Even after the Military Police Complaints Commission confirmed in 2019 that the CFNIS had in its possession the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 Courts Martial transcripts that confirmed that the military police, the CFSIU, Captain McRae commanding officer, and the Courts Martial panel all knew that it was the actions of the babysitter molesting younger children living on base that eventually brought Captain McRae to the attention of the CFSIU, the DOJ still wants to lean heavily upon the 2011 CFNIS investigation.
Am I going to stick it out with the DOJ until a settlement is reached?
I can’t see that happening.
Will a settlement bring closure?
Definitely not.
There is no dollar figure that will undo the suffering that I have endured over the last 45 years. The suffering has festered and metastasized. And you can sure as hell bet that as part of any settlement the DND and the DOJ will require very strict NDAs to be signed and the settlement, if reached, will portray the DND as having been very shocked and concerned about this one time anomaly in the military justice system.
And people want me to move on and just get over it?
Imagine being sexually abused so badly that within 2 years of the abuse ending you’re supposed to be locked up in a psychiatric hospital for emotionally disturbed children.
Imagine your father and your military social worker conspiring to move you from one jurisdiction in Canada to another jurisdiction in Canada to avoid your apprehension by social services. An apprehension that is being driven by the concerns of social services of your father’s anger issues and your safety within your father’s house.
Major Depression.
Severe Anxiety.
Haphephobia.
Sure, my father’s anger and my father’s temper and my father’s physical abuse helped me to learn how to mask this shit, but it’s alive and well.
Politicians?
Dr. Hedy Fry, the MP for Vancouver Centre absolutely refuses to become involved in my matter stating that “there are no military bases in the riding of Vancouver Centre”.
Avi Lewis, the candidate for the NDP in Vancouver Centre has no opinion on child sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces or Medical Assistance in Dying. Or at least I don’t know if he does as I’ve never heard from him after filling out a memo form at his constituency office on Hornby St. near my dentist.
Health Care professionals
Even my current nurse practitioner is beginning to cause me to have some concern. When I first started seeing him around 2021 he assured me that he would be willing to help me apply for M.A.i.D. in 2023 and 2024.
In recent conversation though I feel that his questions seemed to be geared toward me having been “cured” with the escitalopram and the hormone therapy.
The escitalopram just takes the edge off the depression and the anxiety. I still wake up various times every night grinding my teeth. The depression is still there as I can sleep for days on end with absolutely no desire to get out of bed.
Hobbies?
Nothing appeals to me.
In 2015 I made contact with my babysitter <P.S.> and his father <J.S.>. It was actually <J.S.> that I spoke to first.
<J.S.> loved his son. <J.S.> needed his son.
The fact that <P.S.> sexually abused children on CFB Namao, CFB Petawawa, CFB Winnipeg, and CFB Namao again didn’t phase <J.S.> nor did the fact that <P.S.> continued to molest children well after the DND and the CAF kicked <P.S.> out of the military housing in 1985. None of this mattered to <J.S.>. He blamed the military for what had happened to his son. His son would have been fine if the military had looked after him.
My father? Yeah, Richard died in January of 2017 never acknowledging that he was wrong for having blamed me for “fucking with is military career”. Richard never apologized for having blamed me for “allowing the babysitter to molest Scott”. And Richard never did apologize for not protecting me from the desires of the Canadian Armed Forces and the malpractice of Captain Terry Totzke.
Media?
Except for a very few stories, no one gives a shit.
I had always thought that a story like mine, a story where I lay out how the documented flaws in the pre-1998 National Defence Act have such a horrific impact on modern day CFNIS investigations into past events on Canadian Forces Bases in Canada.
The media often ask “but Bobbie, if this was happening, where are all of the other victims? Surely you’re not the only one who got abused on the bases”. This is usually accompanied by massive eye rolling on the reporter’s behalf.
I myself would never have gone on a deep dive like I did except for when master corporal Christian Cyr opened his trap on May 3rd, 2011 and told me about Captain Father Angus McRae’s involvement in this matter.
I don’t know why Cyr did this. Master corporal Robert John Hancock was more discreet during our interview at VPD headquarters in March of 2011. He didn’t come out and blurt anything about McRae, he just kept asking over and over again “if there was anything else I wanted to talk about, anything the might be connected to this matter”.
I guess the problem with Cyr was that when he was handed the file he must have concluded that I was a money grubber just out to make a quick buck or two off the military so he decided that he wasn’t going to mince words and he was going to let me know point blank that he knew the truth about 1980 and that I was scamming the military.
What he probably didn’t anticipate is that due to the use of alcohol, I have no memories of what occurred at the base chapel after I was given the “sickly sweet grape juice”, and he probably didn’t anticipate the internet providing me with access to the lawsuit between my babysitter and the DOJ from back in 2001 when my former babysitter sued the Minister of National Defence for his abuse at the hands of Captain McRae.
If master corporal Christian Cyr had just kept his fucking mouth shut I never would have gone digging into the whole captain father Angus McRae matter on CFB Namao, which never would have led to me obtaining my social service records from across Canada, and so on.
If master corporal Christian Cyr had just kept his knowledge of CFSIU DS-120-10-80 and CM 62 to himself, then when the CFNIS told me in November of 2011 that “they just couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that the babysitter was capable of what I accused him of”, I would have left if there.
And I think that in the majority of CFNIS investigation the investigators with the CFNIS are able to keep their cards close and to keep their poker faces on, unlike Cyr. So most victims of military child sexual abuse never get an inkling that the investigation into the complaints was nothing more than a “dog ‘n’ pony show”.
Has the media shown any concern at all that persons who were sexually abused on military bases prior to 1998 are unable to have charges laid against their abusers due to a statute of limitations in the pre-1998 National Defence Act that does not exist for persons who were sexually abused as children by members of the general public?
Nope.
The media couldn’t care less.
I’ve been trying to get the media interested in this story since 2012. 2021 was when I had enough of the facts together to present a story that should have started alarm bells ringing.
Nope.
Absolutely no interest.
Even in 2014, when Macleans was running their series of stories on sexual abuse in the military, not a single bit of interest. Actually, that’s not true, there was some interest, but that interest got dropped due to pressure from Macleans upper mgmt. I was supposed to stop in and have a meeting with Anne Marie Owens, but on the day of the meeting I showed up to Macleans and was told that she suddenly no longer worked at Macleans and that Macleans was now going in a completely different direction and that these stories were no longer an interest to Macleans.
And it’s not just Macleans, pretty well all of the media, including our so called “independent” media.
If you were to listen to the media in this country you’d swear that children never got sexually abused on base, that if they did, the military justice system would make everything right again.
Somehow the military justice system that couldn’t properly investigate rape against female service members was suddenly capable of investigating child sexual abuse?
Somehow the military justice system that failed miserably in Bosnia and Somalia due to chain of command interference was now somehow immune to chain of command influence when children were sexually abused on base?
The same military justice system that was under orders to ignore child sexual abuse committed by Afghan military forces in Afghanistan is suddenly free to investigate historical child sexual abuse on bases in Canada?
You would think that the media would show an interest.
nope.
nada.
zilch.
The usual excuses given by the media are some variation of “we’ve never heard of this before”, “where are all of the victims”, or ” the media spokesperson for DND and the CAF said that children were never sexually abused on base”.
But yeah, back to the original question posed by today’s prompt.
“Where do you see yourself in ten years?”
Dead for eight years and no longer bothered by this warped and twisted existence.
