Tag: war

When the Word “Homosexuality” Silenced Victims

Cold War policies, Criminal Code language, and the institutional blind spots behind the McRae scandal

If a boy was sexually abused on a Canadian military base in 1980, there was a very real possibility that the system investigating the crime did not primarily see him as a victim.

Instead, he might be seen as evidence of a “homosexual problem.”

That may sound absurd today, but it reflects the reality of how the Canadian Armed Forces understood sexuality during the Cold War.

The language used in the investigations involving the babysitter  and Captain Father Angus McRae reveals something uncomfortable about that era. The institutions responsible for investigating abuse were operating inside a framework where homosexuality itself was treated as deviant, dangerous, and incompatible with military life.

When abuse involved male victims, that framework blurred the line between predator and victim.

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The Cold War Purge and CFAO 19-20

Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and into the early 1980s, the Canadian military treated homosexuality as both a disciplinary problem and a national security concern.

This belief was written directly into policy.

One of the most significant instruments was Canadian Forces Administrative Order (CFAO) 19-20, which governed the investigation and removal of personnel suspected of homosexual conduct.

CFAO 19-20 existed within a broader Cold War purge that targeted homosexuals across Canadian government institutions, including:

• the Canadian Armed Forces

• the RCMP

• the federal civil service

The logic behind the policy was rooted in Cold War paranoia. Officials believed homosexuals could be blackmailed by foreign intelligence services, particularly by Soviet agents.

As a result, the military created investigative structures designed to identify, interrogate, and remove suspected homosexual personnel.

The policy environment produced several consequences:

• homosexuality was framed as a threat to institutional integrity

• investigators were trained to detect homosexual behaviour

• once the label appeared in an investigation, it influenced how everything else was interpreted

That mindset shaped how the military reacted when allegations of abuse surfaced on a Canadian base.

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The “Fruit Machine”: The Era’s Most Bizarre Investigation Tool

The Cold War purge of homosexuals produced one of the strangest devices in Canadian intelligence history.

It was known as the “Fruit Machine.”

Developed during the 1950s and used by Canadian security services, the device attempted to identify homosexuals through physiological testing.

Subjects were shown images of men and women while sensors measured:

• pupil dilation

• perspiration

• heart rate

Investigators believed these physical reactions could reveal sexual orientation.

The concept was deeply flawed and scientifically dubious. But for years it was treated seriously by Canadian security officials.

The existence of programs like this shows how strongly the Canadian state believed homosexuality posed a threat to national security.

Inside that mindset, sexual acts between males were rarely interpreted in neutral terms.

They were treated as signs of deviance, corruption, or institutional danger.

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The Criminal Code Language of the Era

The legal vocabulary used in the McRae investigation also reflected the Criminal Code provisions that existed in Canada during the late 1970s.

Several sections governed sexual activity between males.

Among them were:

Section 155 – Buggery

This provision criminalized anal intercourse except in narrow circumstances.

Even after partial decriminalization reforms in 1969, the offence remained illegal under many conditions and carried heavy stigma.

Section 157 – Gross Indecency

This section criminalized a broad range of sexual conduct between males that did not meet the definition of buggery.

For decades it was widely used by police to prosecute same-sex behaviour.

Section 149 – Indecent Assault on a Male

This offence criminalized sexual assault involving male victims.

Although this section addressed abuse directly, the surrounding legal environment still framed male-male sexual activity primarily as a criminal phenomenon.

When investigators documented the acts committed by Captain McRae, the terminology used in military court records echoed this Criminal Code language.

Terms appearing repeatedly in the documentary record include:

• buggery

• gross indecency

• homosexual acts

• immoral conduct

The problem was that this vocabulary did not clearly separate sexual orientation from sexual abuse.

Both were described using overlapping terminology.

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When Abuse Was Interpreted as a “Homosexual Problem”

Once the investigation entered that legal and institutional framework, the narrative could easily shift.

Instead of focusing exclusively on the exploitation of children, the investigation often framed the events as part of a broader issue involving homosexual behaviour on the base.

This pattern appears across multiple records connected to the scandal, including:

• CFSIU investigative files

• court martial transcripts

• ecclesiastical disciplinary proceedings

• administrative military documentation

Within these records, the abuse of boys by an adult priest was frequently described using the same legal language applied to consensual homosexual acts.

That distinction mattered enormously.

Because once the discussion centred on homosexuality, the victims themselves could become entangled in the stigma surrounding it.

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When Victims Inherited the Stigma

In a military culture that treated homosexuality as deviant or dangerous, the presence of sexual acts between males could cast suspicion on everyone involved.

That included the children.

Investigative language sometimes described victims using the same legal vocabulary applied to the perpetrator.

In practical terms, this meant that boys who had been manipulated or abused could be perceived not purely as victims, but as participants in behaviour that the institution viewed with suspicion.

For children living in military communities where homosexuality was widely condemned, that label carried enormous social consequences.

The stigma surrounding homosexuality acted as a shield that protected abusers while simultaneously harming the victims.

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The Interrogation Culture of the Era

Another piece of the historical puzzle that modern readers often miss is how suspected homosexual behaviour was investigated during the Cold War.

Investigations conducted by military police, intelligence officers, and sometimes the RCMP were not limited to simply asking questions.

They often involved aggressive interrogation techniques designed to identify sexual networks.

Individuals suspected of homosexual behaviour could be subjected to prolonged questioning about:

• their personal relationships

• sexual experiences

• private social circles

• other individuals who might also be homosexual

Investigators frequently attempted to build lists of names, treating suspected homosexuals as part of a hidden network that needed to be uncovered.

In that environment, the goal of the investigation was often not simply to determine whether a crime had occurred. The goal was to expose what investigators believed to be a subculture operating inside the military.

When abuse cases involved male victims, this investigative mindset could create dangerous distortions.

Instead of focusing exclusively on the conduct of the adult offender, investigators might treat the situation as evidence of a wider homosexual environment.

That perspective could easily shift attention away from the central fact that a child had been exploited.

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When Military Social Workers Misinterpreted Trauma

The same cultural attitudes sometimes appeared in child welfare systems connected to military communities.

During the 1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s, military psychological and social work literature still contained deeply flawed assumptions about male victims of sexual abuse.

One of the most damaging beliefs was the idea that boys who had been abused by males might develop “homosexual tendencies” or that sexually abused boys would go on to become “pedophiles”.

In some cases, abused boys were not simply treated as victims of trauma. Instead, professionals attempted to interpret their experiences through theories about sexual orientation.

This could produce disturbing conclusions.

Rather than asking why a child had been targeted by an abuser, military personel sometimes focused on whether the child’s behaviour indicated the development of homosexuality.

For boys already living in military environments where homosexuality was heavily stigmatized, this interpretation could be devastating.

It meant that the very systems meant to help them sometimes reinforced the idea that they themselves were the problem.

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How These Attitudes Shaped the Narrative

When these investigative and psychological assumptions combined, they created a powerful institutional blind spot.

Investigators trained to search for homosexual networks, combined with social theories that linked abuse to sexual orientation, could unintentionally reinforce a narrative that obscured the central issue.

The question that should have been asked was simple:

Who harmed these children?

But in the cultural environment of the time, the question often drifted toward something very different:

What kind of sexual behaviour is happening here?

That shift in focus allowed the stigma surrounding homosexuality to seep into the way victims themselves were perceived.

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The Result: Victims Trapped in the Wrong Story

For boys caught inside that system, the consequences could last for decades.

Instead of being clearly recognized as victims of sexual abuse, some were implicitly drawn into the same moral category as the adults who exploited them.

The institutional narrative blurred the line between:

• victim

• witness

• participant

That distortion did not simply affect how cases were investigated.

It shaped how those events were remembered, documented, and interpreted long after the original investigation ended.

And once that narrative became embedded in official records, it could follow the victims for the rest of their lives.

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A System That Could Not See Clearly

Looking back at the records today, the most striking feature is how deeply institutional language shaped the investigation itself.

The system struggled to clearly distinguish between:

• homosexuality

• sexual misconduct

• sexual abuse of children

When those categories blurred together, the truth became harder to see.

The abuse did not occur because of these policies.

But the policies influenced how the abuse was interpreted, documented, and remembered.

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Why This Still Matters: The Echo in the 2011 CFNIS Investigation

The legacy of these attitudes did not disappear when the Cold War ended.

Decades later, when historical abuse allegations resurfaced and were investigated again by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (CFNIS), the institutional framework surrounding the case was still shaped by the earlier narrative.

Historical records, investigative summaries, and institutional memory all originated in an era where the language of homosexuality had shaped the original investigation.

When modern investigators reviewed those records, they were inheriting a documentary trail that had already been filtered through that lens.

The consequences of those early interpretations did not vanish with time.

They became embedded in the archival record.

And those records continue to shape how the events are understood today.

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The Lesson Hidden in the Documents

The documents surrounding the McRae scandal reveal more than the actions of individual offenders.

They expose the institutional mindset of an era.

Cold War policies like CFAO 19-20, the Criminal Code provisions governing same-sex behaviour, and the broader purge of homosexuals from Canadian institutions created a framework that distorted how abuse was understood.

Within that framework, the most important fact could become obscured:

Children had been exploited.

Understanding that institutional context is essential for understanding why some victims were not recognized, believed, or protected when the events first came to light.

And why the consequences of those failures continue to echo decades later.

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Why Institutions Still Struggle With These Cases

Understanding the cultural and legal environment of the 1970s and early 1980s raises an uncomfortable question.

If the investigative framework of that era blurred the line between homosexuality and sexual abuse, what happens when institutions are asked to revisit those cases today?

For organizations like the Canadian Armed Forces, the answer is complicated.

Re-examining those investigations does not simply require reviewing the conduct of individual offenders. It requires confronting the possibility that the institutional mindset of the time contributed to the harm experienced by victims.

That is a much more difficult admission.

Acknowledging it would mean recognizing that the policies, assumptions, and investigative methods of the era may have distorted how abuse was understood and documented.

It would mean admitting that victims may have been misunderstood, stigmatized, or even implicitly blamed because of the framework through which investigators interpreted the events.

For large institutions, that kind of realization carries consequences.

It raises questions about:

• the fairness of past investigations

• the accuracy of official records

• the treatment of victims

• and the institutional culture that shaped those outcomes

These are not merely historical questions.

They affect how modern investigators interpret archival records, how institutions respond to survivors today, and how the public understands what happened in the past.

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The Weight of the Archival Record

Another difficulty lies in the nature of the records themselves.

Investigations create documents.

Those documents become files.

Those files eventually become the historical record.

But if the original investigation was shaped by flawed assumptions, the record it produced can carry those assumptions forward.

Later investigators reviewing those files may believe they are reading a neutral account of events.

In reality, they may be reading a narrative already filtered through the institutional attitudes of another era.

That means the past can quietly shape the present.

Not through deliberate deception, but through the simple persistence of documents created within an outdated framework.

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A Story That Was Never Fully Told

When the scandal involving the babysitter  and Captain Father Angus McRae surfaced at CFB Edmonton, it exposed a serious problem.

Children had been exploited.

But the institutional language used to describe the events often framed the situation differently.

Instead of clearly identifying abuse, the narrative frequently drifted toward discussions of homosexuality, morality, and deviant behaviour.

In that environment, victims could become entangled in the stigma attached to the very acts committed against them.

The story that ended up recorded in official documents was therefore incomplete.

It described acts.

It described investigations.

But it did not always clearly describe the children as victims of exploitation.

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Why This History Needs to Be Understood

Revisiting these events today is not about rewriting history.

It is about understanding the context in which that history was recorded.

The Cold War policies that governed the military, the Criminal Code language that framed sexual acts between males, and the investigative culture of the time all shaped how the scandal was interpreted.

Without understanding those factors, it is impossible to fully understand the documentary record that remains.

And without understanding the record, it becomes much harder to recognize the experiences of the victims whose lives were shaped by those events.

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The Real Lesson

The story surrounding the McRae scandal ultimately reveals something larger than the actions of any single individual.

It shows how institutional assumptions can shape the way abuse is perceived, investigated, and remembered.

When the framework used to interpret events is flawed, the truth can become distorted long before it reaches a courtroom, an investigative report, or an archival file.

For the children who lived through those events, the consequences of that distortion have lasted for decades.

Understanding the mindset of the era does not change what happened.

But it helps explain why the full story took so long to emerge.

And why some parts of it are still difficult for institutions to confront.

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A Personal Note About Why This Matters

For me, this history is not abstract.

I was one of the children living on the base when these events unfolded. Like many of the boys who became entangled in the investigations that followed, I grew up inside a system that did not clearly distinguish between abuse and the stigma attached to homosexuality.

The labels and assumptions of that era shaped how adults interpreted what had happened, how institutions documented those events, and how some of the children involved were viewed afterward.

The purpose of examining these historical records today is not simply to revisit an old scandal. It is to understand how the investigative framework of the time shaped the narrative that was ultimately written into official documents.

Only by understanding that framework can we fully understand the record that remains.

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The Power of Secrecy.

At first glance the 1980 investigation of Captain Father Angus McRae looks like a typical military scandal from another era. But the real story is not about one officer or one investigation. It is about the system that surrounded them. The military police, the investigators, and the legal authorities responsible for the case were all operating inside the same chain of command that governed the base itself. That was not an accident. It was how the National Defence Act was designed to function at the time.

When the Investigator Talks: The Forgotten Structure Behind the 1980 CFB Edmonton Investigation

In November of 2011 I had a conversation that would later become surprisingly important.

The man I spoke with was Warrant Officer Frederick R. Cunningham, the former Acting Section Commander of the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit (CFSIU) Western Region. Decades earlier he had been tasked with investigating Captain Father Angus McRae during the 1980 sexual abuse scandal at CFB Edmonton (then CFB Namao).

Cunningham did not speak to me as a stranger repeating rumours.

He spoke as the investigator who had been assigned to the case.

Within weeks of that conversation I raised what he had told me with the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal (CFPM) as part of my complaint regarding the handling of my 2011 CFNIS investigation.

What happened after that is worth examining closely, because it reveals something about how the Canadian military justice system actually worked in 1980.

The Base Security Officer: The Hidden Gatekeeper

To understand the structure of the 1980 investigation, you have to understand the role of the Base Security Officer (BSO).

At CFB Edmonton that position was held by Captain David Pilling.

The BSO was not merely a staff officer concerned with physical security. In the Canadian Forces of the 1970s and early 1980s, the BSO was the officer responsible for coordinating serious investigations on the base and supervising the military police detachment.

In practice this meant that when a serious criminal matter arose, the process often flowed like this:

Incident occurs
↓
Base military police become aware
↓
Base Security Officer assesses the situation
↓
Special Investigation Unit assistance is requested

In the McRae case, the CFSIU file shows that Captain Pilling personally tasked WO Cunningham with investigating McRae.

This detail matters because it reveals where the investigation actually began: inside the base command structure.

Command Authority and the Investigation

The base commander at the time was Colonel Daniel Edward Munro.

Colonel Munro was not just the commander of the base.

He was also Captain McRae’s direct superior officer.

This created a structural reality that is easy to overlook today.

The investigative chain began within the same command environment that included the officer being investigated.

The sequence looked something like this:

Colonel Munro – Base Commander
↓
Captain David Pilling – Base Security Officer
↓
Base Military Police
↓
CFSIU investigators (including WO Cunningham)

Even though specialized investigators were brought in, the investigation itself was triggered and coordinated through the base command structure.

This was not unusual for the era.

It was how the system was designed to function.

A System Built Around Command Authority

The Canadian military justice system in 1980 was governed by the National Defence Act as it existed before the major reforms of the late 1990s.

Under that framework, commanding officers exercised enormous influence over disciplinary matters.

They could:

• receive and assess allegations
• determine whether charges should proceed
• decide whether a case would move toward court martial or be handled in other ways

Military police were not institutionally independent in the way civilian police services are today.

They were embedded within the military chain of command.

This meant that when allegations arose involving an officer within the base hierarchy, the investigation inevitably unfolded within that same command structure.

The Conversation in 2011

In November 2011 I spoke with WO Cunningham about the historical investigation.

What he described to me reflected his position inside the original investigative machinery.

He spoke about:

  • the investigative direction
  • the involvement of legal officers
  • the dynamics surrounding the McRae court martial
  • that the activities of Captain McRae were uncovered due to the military police investigation of my babysitter.
  • that it was a command decision to not call in the RCMP to handle the investigation of the babysitter.
  • that it was a command decision to keep the McRae matter in the military justice system instead of handing it off to the civilian courts.
  • that it was a command decision to limit the number of charges brought against Captain McRae.

These were not abstract opinions. They were observations from someone who had been positioned inside the investigation itself.

In December 2011 I raised what Cunningham had told me in a complaint sent to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal.

The Institutional Response

In January 2012 I received a response from the Provost Marshal’s office stating that the Professional Standards review had concluded that CFNIS investigators had acted appropriately.

The letter also included a strikingly narrow statement:

The review found no indication that military police in the 1980s were aware of incidents involving me personally.

This wording is significant.

It does not say that military police were unaware of abuse occurring on the base.

It only states that investigators were unaware of incidents involving me specifically.

That distinction leaves open a much larger question about what investigators knew regarding other victims and events at the time.

In his January 2012 response, which came less than one month after I informed the Provost Marshal of my conversation with Fredrick R. Cunningham, Deputy Commander Lt.-Col. Gilles Santerre concluded that he could find no evidence that the military police in 1980 were aware of incidents involving me personally. 

That statement may be technically correct in the narrowest possible sense, but it sidesteps the far more important fact that the individual I have long identified as the person who molested my brother and me was already under investigation by the base military police in 1980 for sexually abusing the children that he was babysitting. According to both former SIU investigator Fred Cunningham and the father of babysitter, it was this very investigation into the babysitter that led investigators to uncover the activities of Captain Father Angus McRae. In other words, the military police did not need to know my name to know that children on the base were being abused. The investigation that ultimately exposed McRae began precisely because those abuses were already being reported.

Also, Bobbie Garnet Bees became my legal name in the mid ’00s. The CFNIS were aware of my legal change of name and what my name was during the time of the abuse. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS only searched the 1980 files for my current legal name and not my birth name. If it ever came to light at a later date that my name was in fact contained in the 1980 military police investigation of the babysitter or the CFSIU investigation of Captain McRae, the CFPM and the CFNIS could say “ooops, sorry, we honestly forgot about your change of name”.

The Curious Silence in 2016

Several years later, during a later phase of the investigation, CFNIS investigators attempted to contact Cunningham.

His response was notable.

He declined to participate in a recorded interview and refused to meet investigators in person. Instead, he spoke briefly by telephone and avoided giving detailed answers.

This was a stark contrast to the way he had spoken with me in 2011.

Why Cunningham became so cautious remains unclear.

But the timeline raises an obvious possibility.

After my complaint reached the Provost Marshal in December 2011 and included information Cunningham had shared, it is entirely possible that he was advised to avoid discussing the investigation further.

If that occurred, it would explain why he became extremely careful when investigators contacted him again years later.

The Official Secrets Act and the Security of Information Act allow the Canadian Armed Forces to control what information becomes public and what information is never to be discussed with the public.

A Structural Problem, Not a Conspiracy

The purpose of examining this structure is not to claim that a conspiracy occurred.

The issue is structural.

The system that existed in 1980 placed investigations, command authority, and disciplinary decisions within the same organizational chain.

When serious allegations arose involving members of that chain of command, investigators inevitably had to operate within an environment influenced by the same hierarchy.

This was precisely the kind of structural problem that later inquiries into the Canadian military justice system criticized.

Reforms implemented after the Somalia Inquiry were intended to create a clearer separation between investigators and the command authority whose members they might be required to investigate.

The Larger Question

Looking back at the McRae investigation today raises a simple question.

When a serious criminal investigation begins inside the same command structure that includes the accused officer, how independent can that investigation truly be?

The answer to that question is not found in speculation.

It is found in the structure of the system itself.

And that structure is preserved in the documents that still exist today.

Below is a closing section you can append to the blog post. I wrote it so it ties the command structure, the National Defence Act flaw you’ve been analyzing, and the chilling effect of secrecy laws together in a coherent way. You can trim or sharpen the tone to match your usual style.

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The Structural Flaw Behind It All

When you step back from the personalities involved in the 1980 investigation, a larger structural problem comes into focus.

The issue is not simply that the investigation occurred on a military base, or that the accused officer was part of the command structure.

The issue lies in how the National Defence Act operated before the reforms of the late 1990s.

At the time, the Code of Service Discipline effectively placed the entire disciplinary process under command authority. Commanding officers were not merely supervisors. They were central actors in the decision-making process that determined how allegations would proceed.

They could influence whether:

• allegations were pursued as service offences

• charges were referred for court martial

• matters remained within the military system

• civilian police were notified

This arrangement created what can only be described as a prosecutorial bottleneck.

Every major decision flowed upward through the chain of command.

In the McRae investigation, the chain of command ran directly through Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, who was both the base commander and the direct superior officer of the accused.

Even though specialized investigators such as the CFSIU were brought in, the investigation itself still originated inside that command structure through the Base Security Officer.

The system was not designed to isolate investigators from command influence. It was designed to operate within the command structure itself.

That distinction matters.

Because when serious allegations involve individuals within that same hierarchy, investigators inevitably find themselves operating in an environment shaped by the very authority structure connected to the case.

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Silence Through Secrecy

There is another layer to this story that is rarely discussed.

Investigators and military personnel operating in this environment were also bound by the Official Secrets Act, legislation that imposed strict legal obligations regarding the disclosure of information obtained through official duties.  

The Act criminalized unauthorized disclosure of government information connected to official service.

For someone like Warrant Officer Frederick Cunningham, who served as the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU Western Region during the McRae investigation, this created a powerful constraint.

Anything he learned during the investigation was information acquired through official duties.

Speaking openly about those events decades later could potentially be interpreted as revealing protected information related to military operations, investigations, or internal decision-making.

Even if the events themselves occurred decades earlier, the legal obligations imposed by secrecy legislation do not necessarily expire simply because time has passed.

The result is a quiet but powerful chilling effect.

Former investigators may possess direct knowledge about how an investigation unfolded, but the legal environment surrounding them discourages open discussion.

In many cases they may simply decide that remaining silent is the safest course of action.

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The Problem With Silence

When secrecy laws intersect with a disciplinary system controlled by command authority, an unintended consequence emerges.

The people who know the most about how an investigation actually unfolded are often the least able to speak about it.

Investigators such as Cunningham may possess firsthand knowledge of the investigative environment, the legal advice involved, and the decisions made during the case.

But decades later, those same individuals may feel legally constrained from explaining what they witnessed.

This creates a situation where the historical record becomes shaped almost entirely by institutional documents and official summaries, rather than the voices of the investigators who actually worked the case.

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Why This Matters Today

The Canadian Forces eventually recognized the dangers inherent in this structure.

The reforms that followed the Somalia Inquiry were designed to strengthen the institutional independence of military police investigations and reduce the influence of the chain of command over criminal matters.

Those reforms did not appear out of nowhere.

They were a response to the realization that the previous system placed investigators in a position where command authority, legal control, and secrecy obligations intersected in ways that could obscure the full truth of events.

Looking back at the 1980 investigation through this lens reveals something important.

The question is not simply whether individuals acted correctly or incorrectly.

The deeper question is whether the system itself was designed in a way that made full transparency almost impossible.

And when the structure of the system makes transparency difficult, silence becomes the natural outcome.

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In the end, the McRae investigation tells us less about individual decisions than it does about the design of the system itself. The pre-1998 National Defence Act concentrated investigative power, prosecutorial control, and command authority inside the same chain of command. When serious allegations arose within that chain, the system was forced to investigate itself. That is not simply a historical curiosity. It is a design flaw. And like any flaw built into the foundation of a structure, its consequences were not always visible at the time, but they were inevitable.

Well, missed this one.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/priest-guilty-of-assault-and-sex-assault-at-nordik-spa

This apparently happened back in 2016.

Another Canadian Armed Forces military chaplain was involved with unwanted sexual touching.

I can’t be the only one sensing a trend going on here.

Captain Father Angus McRae (chaplain).

Captain McRae’s altar boy.

Brigadier General Roger Bazin (chaplain)

Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan (instructor of altar boys)

and now Captain Jean El-Dahdouh (chaplain).

And no, these aren’t the only chaplains.

Unfortunately the way military record keeping worked is that military convictions via summary trial or courts martial were not compiled in a database or made known to the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC). The only way that the sexual escapades of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces ever made it into the public realm is if the member appealed their military conviction in the Courts Martial Appeal Court of Canada (CMAC). Only after the conclusion of a CMAC appeal would the fact that a courts martial occurred become public knowledge. This is how the Ontario Crown was completely unaware of Donald Joseph Sullivan’s military convictions for child sexual abuse when he was sentenced in the 2000s for sexually abusing children in the ’80s.

Who knows how many kiddie diddler chaplains there were in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Somehow Captain El-Dahdouh got the bright idea to assault women at a nordic spa in Chelsea in the province of Quebec.

Two of his known victims were 17.

Apparently the Canadian Armed Forces took swift and decisive move in 2016 of suspending the good Captain until he was convicted in 2019. Not sure if he was confined to barracks, or suspended with pay.

Going to go out on a limb here and I’ll just assume that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service conducted one heckuva detailed investigation to see if the good Captain had any interactions with military dependents under the age of 18 on which ever bases Captain El-Dahdouh had been stationed at or had visited.

All I can say is that it’s a damn good thing that these incidents of abuse occurred OFF-BASE and after December 1998 and the passage of Bill C-25(1998).

Had these abuses occurred on base prior to 1998, then the 3-year-time-bar would have been in full effect as well as the summary investigation flaw. Even if the women had reported Captain El-Dahdouh to the military police or the CFSIU right away, the women would have had to hope like hell that Captain El-Dahdouh’s commanding officer didn’t simply dismiss the charges brought against Captain El-Dahdouh.

“He was just being overly friendly”

“He had a little too much to drink”

“Ministering to the military causes a lot of stress”

I wonder how his commanding officer would have explained this away.