For decades afterwards, Gerald Barton did not talk about it. What could he possibly say? That he was not a rapist? That he did not knock up that little Miller girl, like her family said he did, that he was not some good-for-nothing, worth-nothing, low-life-sexual-predator, just trying to run away from his past?
No, he didn’t talk about it, because he understood that saying he wasn’t guilty is what every supposedly guilty man says. So he kept quiet, as he bounced from place to place. Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Grande Prairie, parts of B.C., pretty much anywhere is where he went, picking tobacco, paving roads, working construction, installing glass and trying not to look too hard in the rearview mirror.
“What was the use of me talking about the past?” Mr. Barton says, in a down home, Down East drawl betraying his small-town Nova Scotia, Canada, roots.
“What you know you got to keep to yourself, and you can’t tell anybody about what happened because they’ll think your some damn rapist, and back when all this was happening I was just a kid, and there was no kind of DNA testing, and people took people for their words.
“And the Millers, they lied their way right into court and it made my life ever since all about scraping and digging, just scraping and digging all this goddamn life to get by, and never getting any farther ahead than where I am today.
“It was a dirty trick they all played on me.”
It was a fabrication that forever altered the course of Mr. Barton’s life — a statutory rape charge and conviction that was quashed by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in January 2011 — some 40 years after the fact, and that, at age 62, has led an innocent man to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia where Mr. Barton and his lawyer, Dale Dunlop, are seeking compensation, arguing the RCMP and the local Crown prosecutor were the authors of a gross miscarriage of justice.
Lawyers. Cops. Courtrooms. A life lived from one place to the next, all of it was a world away from the world young Gerald Barton, known to everybody as “Junebug,” grew up in the 1950s and ’60s. Home was Jordantown, a crossroads on the outskirts of Digby, N.S., a black community where everybody knew everybody — and most everybody was just getting by.
Clara and Gerald Sr. had 12 kids. Junebug was the eighth to come along. The family lived in a 20×16-foot house. Mr. Barton hauled lumber for $35 a week. Junebug was a typical country son, running loose with his friends, playing baseball and hockey, fishing and hunting.
The Millers lived up the hill, beside the railroad tracks. They owned a store. They had a daughter, Rebecca. At 14, she got pregnant. In 1969 she gave birth to a son, Elroy. Jack Miller, the patriarch, seethed, demanded to know the identity of the father. Rebecca insisted it was her older brother, Lamont, and that he had been sexually assaulting her since she was nine years old.
Jack Miller refused to believe it. So Rebecca Miller told a lie, a wicked utterance that she would reveal to RCMP Constable Brent Kelly in a videotaped statement taken in August 2008 during the course of an investigation targeting Lamont Miller — which was unrelated and unbeknownst to Gerald Barton and, along with DNA testing, would confirm the true paternity of the child and ultimately lead to his exoneration.
“My father, he’s got, he had a bad temper,” Ms. Miller told police. “And he kept saying, ‘Who’s the father?’ And then I just lied and said it was Junebug. And then that’s when he took it from there.”
Mr. Barton alleges that Jack Miller, since deceased, marched down the hill to his family’s home and demanded $900 from his father — or else threatened to have his then 19-year-old son charged with rape. The Bartons didn’t have that kind of money.
“The Mounties showed up at our door and gave my old man a summons and told him I had to be in court, at the old Digby Courthouse, a few days later,” Mr. Barton says.
“I bet you I wasn’t in that courthouse for half an hour. The only thing I remember saying is: ‘I didn’t do it.’ ”
He was convicted of having “sexual intercourse with a female between the ages of 14 and 16 years of age,” sentenced to one-day in jail and a year probation. No record of the court proceedings and no record of an RCMP investigation are known to exist. The only record was Mr. Barton’s criminal record. Amazing!
He has sworn in court documents filed since that he was convicted without a trial, wasn’t provided with legal counsel and never pleaded guilty. He also alleges that the RCMP failed to investigate “the true perpetrator” of the crime and that John R. Nichols, the Crown prosecutor for Digby in 1970, was a longtime “personal friend” of Jack Miller’s.
John Nichols became a provincial court judge, spent 20 years on the bench and retired in 1997. He is now 81, living in Digby and last summer received the Joe Casey Humanitarian Award, recognizing a local citizen who has worked for the “betterment” of the community. He claims a vague recollection of the Barton case.
“It’s a long time ago,” he said. “And I can’t think, if I can recall the matter, I believe he entered a guilty plea. And I don’t believe I knew Jack Miller.”
Junebug Barton knows what he believes: that his life would have been different if Rebecca Miller had not lied. He had dreams as a kid, of joining the army, of maybe travelling abroad. He liked drawing, working with his hands — and his mind — and not just his back, bending and scraping from one job to the next.
“Your Social Insurance Number tells a lot about you,” he says.
His told employers that Gerald Barton was toxic: a convicted rapist. Today, he is living out West, and still working construction, slugging it out, like he always has.
“I am not angry,” Junebug Barton says. “It was a dirty trick they played on me. They threw me in jail, like I was nothing, and I don’t think that’s right.
“And they never even stopped to ask if I was guilty.”
National Post
This is a hardly believable miscarriage of justice. An innocent man's life ruined; the guilty brother never faced any charges for rape and incest of a minor; the destruction of any documentation should have resulted in criminal charges, and Judge Nichols should be investigated for his relationship with Jack Miller. Please pray that justice is done here.
 |
| Gerald Barton |
“What was the use of me talking about the past?” Mr. Barton says, in a down home, Down East drawl betraying his small-town Nova Scotia, Canada, roots.
“What you know you got to keep to yourself, and you can’t tell anybody about what happened because they’ll think your some damn rapist, and back when all this was happening I was just a kid, and there was no kind of DNA testing, and people took people for their words.
“And the Millers, they lied their way right into court and it made my life ever since all about scraping and digging, just scraping and digging all this goddamn life to get by, and never getting any farther ahead than where I am today.
“It was a dirty trick they all played on me.”
It was a fabrication that forever altered the course of Mr. Barton’s life — a statutory rape charge and conviction that was quashed by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in January 2011 — some 40 years after the fact, and that, at age 62, has led an innocent man to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia where Mr. Barton and his lawyer, Dale Dunlop, are seeking compensation, arguing the RCMP and the local Crown prosecutor were the authors of a gross miscarriage of justice.
Lawyers. Cops. Courtrooms. A life lived from one place to the next, all of it was a world away from the world young Gerald Barton, known to everybody as “Junebug,” grew up in the 1950s and ’60s. Home was Jordantown, a crossroads on the outskirts of Digby, N.S., a black community where everybody knew everybody — and most everybody was just getting by.
 |
| Digby Wharf on the Bay of Fundy |
The Millers lived up the hill, beside the railroad tracks. They owned a store. They had a daughter, Rebecca. At 14, she got pregnant. In 1969 she gave birth to a son, Elroy. Jack Miller, the patriarch, seethed, demanded to know the identity of the father. Rebecca insisted it was her older brother, Lamont, and that he had been sexually assaulting her since she was nine years old.
Jack Miller refused to believe it. So Rebecca Miller told a lie, a wicked utterance that she would reveal to RCMP Constable Brent Kelly in a videotaped statement taken in August 2008 during the course of an investigation targeting Lamont Miller — which was unrelated and unbeknownst to Gerald Barton and, along with DNA testing, would confirm the true paternity of the child and ultimately lead to his exoneration.
“My father, he’s got, he had a bad temper,” Ms. Miller told police. “And he kept saying, ‘Who’s the father?’ And then I just lied and said it was Junebug. And then that’s when he took it from there.”
Mr. Barton alleges that Jack Miller, since deceased, marched down the hill to his family’s home and demanded $900 from his father — or else threatened to have his then 19-year-old son charged with rape. The Bartons didn’t have that kind of money.
“The Mounties showed up at our door and gave my old man a summons and told him I had to be in court, at the old Digby Courthouse, a few days later,” Mr. Barton says.
 |
| Old Digby Courthouse |
“I bet you I wasn’t in that courthouse for half an hour. The only thing I remember saying is: ‘I didn’t do it.’ ”
He was convicted of having “sexual intercourse with a female between the ages of 14 and 16 years of age,” sentenced to one-day in jail and a year probation. No record of the court proceedings and no record of an RCMP investigation are known to exist. The only record was Mr. Barton’s criminal record. Amazing!
He has sworn in court documents filed since that he was convicted without a trial, wasn’t provided with legal counsel and never pleaded guilty. He also alleges that the RCMP failed to investigate “the true perpetrator” of the crime and that John R. Nichols, the Crown prosecutor for Digby in 1970, was a longtime “personal friend” of Jack Miller’s.
John Nichols became a provincial court judge, spent 20 years on the bench and retired in 1997. He is now 81, living in Digby and last summer received the Joe Casey Humanitarian Award, recognizing a local citizen who has worked for the “betterment” of the community. He claims a vague recollection of the Barton case.
“It’s a long time ago,” he said. “And I can’t think, if I can recall the matter, I believe he entered a guilty plea. And I don’t believe I knew Jack Miller.”
Junebug Barton knows what he believes: that his life would have been different if Rebecca Miller had not lied. He had dreams as a kid, of joining the army, of maybe travelling abroad. He liked drawing, working with his hands — and his mind — and not just his back, bending and scraping from one job to the next.
“Your Social Insurance Number tells a lot about you,” he says.
His told employers that Gerald Barton was toxic: a convicted rapist. Today, he is living out West, and still working construction, slugging it out, like he always has.
“I am not angry,” Junebug Barton says. “It was a dirty trick they played on me. They threw me in jail, like I was nothing, and I don’t think that’s right.
“And they never even stopped to ask if I was guilty.”
National Post
This is a hardly believable miscarriage of justice. An innocent man's life ruined; the guilty brother never faced any charges for rape and incest of a minor; the destruction of any documentation should have resulted in criminal charges, and Judge Nichols should be investigated for his relationship with Jack Miller. Please pray that justice is done here.
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