"I was shocked," top Anglican says of sex charge

The top Anglican official in the Kingston region told me, in a recent interview, that he was shocked by news that the former choirmaster of the Anglican cathedral in Kingston, John Gallienne, has been charged again with molesting a young boy, 20 years after he was exposed as a pedophile who preyed on choirboys for at least 15 years. Rt. Rev. George Bruce (inset) was open and welcoming when I asked him to talk about his reaction to the news and the church's response. Here's the audio of the interview (after the jump, my story from the Kingston Whig-Standard based on this interview). During the interview, you will occasionally hear comments from Wayne Varley, the executive officer of the Diocese of Ontario, who was with the bishop during the interview:



Kingston Whig-Standard
Wednesday, April 20, 2010
By Rob Tripp
The top Anglican cleric in Kingston says police investigating a sexual abuse complaint against former choirmaster John Gallienne have not asked for the church’s help but it is prepared to assist.
“If we are approached, we will co-operate fully and openly with the authorities to the best of our ability,” Rt. Rev. George Bruce told the Whig-Standard in an interview.
Bruce is the Bishop of the Diocese of Ontario, an eastern Ontario district that covers five counties and includes 45 parishes, including St. George’s Cathedral.
Gallienne was the charismatic organist and choirmaster at St. George’s for more than 15 years, until he was exposed in 1990 as a pedophile who preyed on choirboys as young as eight. Complaints were made about Gallienne years before he was prosecuted.
He was sentenced to six years in prison after he pleaded guilty to molesting 15 boys. He has been living in Ottawa since 1994, after he was released from prison.
Last week, he was charged by Kingston Police with indecent assault on a young boy between 1980 and 1982, at a time when Gallienne was a respected figure in Anglican music programs.
“I think it’s safe to say that I was shocked,” Bruce said. “I was not in the diocese when the events occurred in the 1990s.”
Bruce became bishop of the Diocese of Ontario in 2002.
He said his first thoughts were for the person who filed the complaint.
“Another 20 years have gone on since those events and this individual has had to be burdened by the pain of that,” he said. “At the moment, it’s an allegation; the court system has got to work its way through but I’ve always believed if one person was abused that’s one too many.”
Bruce said he does not agree with the notion of not prosecuting more cases from the same time period as the original complaints.
“I don’t think it’s better to let it lie,” he said. “I suppose some people would make that case, but I would say, for the individual who has been abused ... they have the right to their day in court.”
Bruce said he knows that the issue may reopen old wounds and cause pain.
“I’m aware of that but I balance that against the pain the individual suffered,” he said.
Bruce was working in the Diocese of Ottawa at the time Kingston’s Anglican community was shattered by the allegations.
Members broke into camps, some supporting the church and condemning Gallienne’s accusers, while others laid siege to the hierarchy, chastising leaders for sheltering an abuser for so many years.
Many people defended Gallienne, describing him as a flawed but brilliant man.
The church paid millions of dollars in a civil lawsuit settlement with some victims and their families. It paid for counselling and education for some victims.
Bruce could not say what the church would do if it was approached now by this latest complainant, seeking financial assistance for counselling or other services.
“That’s kind of hypothetical because I don’t know what the results of the court case are going to be,” he said. “I don’t know, given that what I read in your newspaper article is that his name is not allowed to be revealed, whether that would even happen, whether he would come and see us.”
Bruce said he does not know how the counselling and other assistance was arranged for previous victims.
“All the files on that were sealed by the court so ... I have no idea who the victims were in the previous instances,” he said.
The bishop said there’s been one preliminary discussion with the diocesan chancellor, lawyer Roy Conacher.
He said, technically, the diocese has no involvement in this issue, since it has not been approached by any authority. It knows of the situation only through media reports.
“Nobody’s approached us,” he repeated. “As I said to you, if somebody does, then we will be more than willing to be open and accountable to them.”
Bruce said he is confident that the policies and procedures created in the wake of the Gallienne scandal mean vulnerable members of all congregations are protected.
“I’m very confident in the safeguards,” he said. “We have a screening policy for people in a position of trust.
“We have a process for addressing issues of abuse, which we did not have prior to all of this coming to light.”
The diocese also has a detailed set of rules setting out procedures for its own internal investigations of allegations of sexual misconduct and discipline in its own court-like process.
The discipline procedures have not been used.
Gallienne was released on bail last week and was ordered to live at his home in Ottawa, where he has been active for years in music programs at St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church.
Anglican leaders in Ottawa have granted Gallienne permission to participate in music programs there, contrary to an edict issued in 1994 by Kingston’s bishop, Peter Mason. The Diocese of Ottawa adopted Kingston’s ban after it was first issued.
Mason barred Gallienne from ever again holding a position of leadership in the church, particularly with respect to music and choirs.
The ban remains in effect in Kingston, Bruce said, but Gallienne continues to participate in music programs in Ottawa.
“I agree with my predecessor who indicated that the pain and damage caused by Mr. Gallienne was such that he had forfeited the right to exercise leadership in music ministry,” Bruce said.
He said he spoken to the bishop in Ottawa, John Chapman.
“I speak to the bishop,” he said., “I think I get a sympathetic hearing from him but in fact I cant speak for him ... [and] much as I might like to have jurisdiction over the Diocese of Ottawa, I don’t.”
Bruce said he did not know that Gallienne had obtained a pardon from his first convictions until he learned of it in a story published in the Whig.

» All of Cancrime's coverage of this case

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Pedophile Gallienne stands to lose pardon

Pedophile John Gallienne (seen above in a photo of a choir at St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church in Ottawa - he's back row left in the red robe) will automatically be stripped of his pardon if he is convicted of a new sex charge laid this week by Kingston Police. Gallienne, 65, is charged with indecent assault on a young boy in Kingston in the early 1980s, when he was the beloved organist and choirmaster at St. George’s Anglican Cathedral.

In the early 1990s, he was convicted of more than 20 sex crimes involving 15 young boys he preyed on for at least 15 years through his powerful position.
Gallienne was released from prison in 1994 after serving four years of a six-year prison term. He obtained a pardon from the National Parole Board, the Whig-Standard learned, though officials will not confirm it.
“We can’t talk about specific cases,” said Caroline Douglas, the director of communications in Ottawa for the National Parole Board.
Gallienne was required to wait at least five years after the end of his prison sentence to seek the pardon.
Yves Bellefeuille, director of pardons for the board, said if a person with a pardon is convicted of a new, serious crime, the pardon is revoked in a process started by the RCMP.
“The files are reactivated and then the RCMP informs the Parole Board and, of course, other partners that were part of that file are informed and everybody reactivates the file,” Bellefeuille said, in an interview Friday, his last day on the job before retirement.
He said that a conviction for a crime that took place before the pardon was granted is still considered a new conviction that automatically overrides the pardon.
“From the moment there is new court action that took place with a conviction, at that point the person will be losing their pardon because it’s a cessation,” he said.
It’s not known why Gallienne sought a pardon, though Canadians with criminal records for serious crimes are barred from travelling to the United States and some other countries.
Gallienne is active in the St. John’s Anglican Church congregation in Ottawa, where he lives, and where his criminal record is widely known. He is active in music programs there, in violation of a ban on such activity imposed by Anglican leaders in the Kingston region. The ban is not binding in Ottawa.
A pardon does not erase a criminal record.
In the case of someone convicted of a sex crime, the record is kept in a separate location but the name is flagged in the Canadian Police Information Centre, a database used by law enforcement.
Details of the conviction would be discovered during a check that takes place if the person applies to work with children, the disabled or other vulnerable people, according to the Parole Board.
Bellefeuille said the board has implemented more stringent investigation and decision-making processes since 2007 for sexual offenders seeking pardons.
“If the person lived in Ottawa, we will check again with the local police of Ottawa but also we will check, even though he never lived let’s say in Gatineau, we will check with Gatineau, so we kind of expanded our geographic search,” he said.
The board also is adding more automated links to law enforcement databases in addition to the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC).
“We can do a CPIC check, but there’s also other systems that exist that are managed by the RCMP and linked with the police and it’s those types of systems,” he said. “They are law enforcement or investigation systems.”
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has pledged to overhaul the pardon process to make it more difficult for sex offenders to get pardons.
The promise was made earlier this month in the face of public outrage over the revelation that former junior hockey Graham James, who was convicted of molesting young male players, received a pardon in 2007.
The government failed to follow through on a plan last year to make pardons more expensive.
The Parole Board sought to triple the price of pardon applications from $50 to $150.
The Conservative government did not move ahead with the proposed fee hike, although the Parole Board said it could not afford to continue processing applications for just $50 each.
“It’s something that has been a struggle because with inflation and all the rest ... but at this time we are still at the $50 mark,” Douglas said.
Pardons also can be revoked if courts provide the board with new information about convictions, Bellefeuille said. If a person with a pardon is convicted of a minor crime, the RCMP notifies the Parole Board and it conducts an investigation. A board member decides whether the pardon should be revoked.
Last year, more than 700 pardons were revoked.
More than 400,000 people have received pardons since the program was created in 1970, with more than 15,000 revocations.
The number of pardon applications in Canada has skyrocketed.
The number of applications last year, roughly 35,700, is more than double the number filed five years ago. Last year, the board granted more than 30,300 pardons, including some from a backlog from the previous year.
Bellefeuille said activity by private firms that help broker pardons may explain the surge.
“There’s been a lot of marketing on their part and ... we also have the baby boomers that have retired,” he said. “There’s more and more and they are probably looking at travelling to the U.S. and things like that.”
It’s estimated that nearly 4 million Canadians have a criminal record.
Gallienne was released on bail Thursday. His case is scheduled to he heard in court again April 27.

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Is Canada's worst pedophile really a killer?

Canada's worst pedophile, a predator who may have raped and molested thousands of young boys in a three-decade reign of sexual terror, has been denied parole for the sixth time in the past nine years. The National Parole Board said (document after the jump) that although Gary Blair Walker (inset) is now 65 years old, his "risk for sexual re-offence against children continues to be high." The board also offered, for the first time, a chilling commentary about the effect of Walker's crimes.

Walker is a rare beast in Canadian criminal history – one of the few people branded a dangerous offender (fewer than 500 criminals have been declared dangerous offenders in the past 30 years). It means Walker can be held in prison indefinitely, until it's determined he is no longer a threat. That determination is unlikely to come, ever. It is a statistical probability that Walker will die in prison. He admitted to sexually abusing roughly 200 young boys. Psychiatrists testified at his trial that it is likely there were at least 2,000 victims.

This is not a typo of zeroes. Two thousand victims.

Walker's favourite prey were 12- and 13-year-old boys. Consider that every victim is typically, repeatedly abused. Walker may have committed tens of thousands of sex crimes. In a society where murder is considered our most heinous crime, Walker never attracted the public revulsion usually reserved for serial killers. Perhaps it is owed him, given the understated, but wrenching and heartbreaking statement that appears in the June 4 written record of the National Parole Board decision to keep Walker locked up.

It is noted that at least three of your victims committed suicide.

At least three of his victims committed suicide. There could be more. How many more young men spiralled into drug abuse, despair, perhaps poverty and crime, after their childhoods were mangled, their concepts of trust and honesty shattered. Three deaths, by other means, would qualify Walker as a serial killer.

There is no denying that he cut a swath of destruction across Ontario, as he cloaked himself in the guise of protector, helper, mentor. He worked as a police officer, scout leader, hockey coach, judo instructor, school bus driver and school board courier. Each role was a ruse - a malevolent deception that concealed a monster who hunted children.

All of these occupations and interests served to portray you as a concerned citizen and helper which allowed you to fool parents and gain repeated access to their young male children.

The parole board notes that Walker's deviance is "deeply engrained." He seems content to sit in prison, where he has been for 15 years now, knowing that that tender young flesh that he still craves is beyond his reach. He has never sought parole in the past nine years. Each review of his case was automatic. Walker was first arrested in 1992, then freed on bail while awaiting trial. While free, he abused more victims. In 1994, he was declared a dangerous offender, after he had been convicted of roughly 100 sex crimes involving about 50 young boys. Walker grew up in Algonquin, a small community in eastern Ontario about 75 kilometres south of Ottawa. His sex crimes spawned a raft of civil lawsuits, outlined in this detailed story published 10 years ago in the Ottawa Sun.

Walker's parole decisions
The first decision below was issued June 4, 2009, and contains the first-ever reference to the suicides of some of Walker's victims.



Below is one document containing five separate parole board decisions, issued in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007. Walker was denied freedom in each case. When you see "Page 2" in the upper right corner, you are beginning a new decision.



Note: To download any document on Cancrime to your computer, click the "More" button in the bar at the top of the e-doc viewer.

Related:
» Canada's harshest sentence hits a record high
» 'Runaway train' stopped by the court
» How child molesters are made

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Canada's harshest sentence hits record high

A conviction for first-degree murder, which carries an automatic penalty of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, is not Canada's harshest prison sentence. In an atmosphere in which law-and-order advocates screech that we've grown soft on crime and criminals, you might be surprised to discover that last year judges handed out more of the country's toughest sentence than at any time in the past three decades.

The dangerous offender designation is Canada's harshest punishment. It is the country's lock-him-up-and-throw-away-the-key tactic and as close as Canadian justice comes to imposing a death penalty. Most criminals declared dangerous offenders die in prison. Last year, 31 dangerous offender designations were meted out by courts, the largest number since the law was created in 1977 (28 in 2007). It brings to 455 the number of DOs declared since '77. Many are sex offenders and a large number are child molesters with multiple victims – like Christopher Robin Karasek (inset), who admitted to molesting 50 boys in New Brunswick.

Some DOs have died and a few have been deported or released from prison under supervision. As of April 2008, there were 394 active DOs, with 374 of those behind bars. They make up just 2.8% of the federal prison population. There are no female DOs. All DOs since 1997 have faced an indeterminate sentence, meaning there is no fixed parole date (though determinate sentences were imposed before 1997). A DO is entitled to a seek day parole four years after being imprisoned and can seek full parole after seven years. Few DOs get early parole and few are ever paroled. When they are, they are under supervision for life.

A 1996 study found that 40% of DOs were psychopaths.

Related posts:
How child molesters are made
Runaway train stopped by the court

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A pedophile's pedigree

Here's a rare glimpse into a confidential criminal record of a frightening pedophile, Walter Jacobson (pictured). He has been relentless throughout his criminal career in hunting victims and he is persistent; preying on young girls for decades, unlike many predators whose beastly appetite wanes with age. Jacobson shows no signs of stopping. His adult criminal record begins in 1964. The document below, exclusive at Cancrime, inventories his first three decades of criminal exploits. Criminal records are considered highly confidential and are maintained by the RCMP. The record shows place and date of convictions and cases in which charges against him were dropped. I've been tracking Jacobson for more than a decade. Here's the last story I wrote about him at the Kingston Whig-Standard. Check back for more on Jacobson in future.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Law police prison

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