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Alleged victim testifies she was 13 when Ed John sexually assaulted her
Prominent Indigenous leader charged with sex crimes dating back to 1974
Kate Partridge · CBC News ·
Posted: Jul 25, 2022 9:07 PM PT
Grand Chief Ed John, shown here in a file photo, is charged with sex crimes that allegedly took place in 1974. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
The trial of prominent Indigenous leader and former B.C. cabinet minister Ed John began Monday in B.C. Supreme Court in Prince George with emotional testimony from the alleged victim in front of a small gallery of onlookers.
John, 73, is charged with four counts of having sexual intercourse with a female without consent, a charge that existed in the Criminal Code of Canada when the alleged offences took place in 1974. There have been a number of revisions to the code since then, and the charge no longer exists under the current code.
The alleged victim testified Monday that the sexual assaults began when she was 13 years old and an employee of John, who was 25 at the time and a recent graduate of the University of Victoria. He was the director of the Doh Day De Claa Friendship Centre in Prince George and she was employed to help with youth programming.
"He was a hero in my eyes," she said about John.
She told the court she was aware he was a university graduate and believed he was either a lawyer already, or was heading to law school.
The trial is taking place this week at the Prince George courthouse.
Defence lawyers claim the encounters were consensual and questioned the witness's timeline of events. They attempted to throw doubt on her recollections by pointing out inconsistencies in her description of John's hair at the time and past statements made to police.
John sat in the courtroom Monday, wearing a plain black suit.
The witness's story did not change throughout cross examination. She testified that John assaulted her twice in his office at the Doh Day De Claa Friendship Centre.
She alleges the other two offences occurred west of Prince George when John claimed to be driving her to a youth conference. She says they never made it to the conference. Instead, he assaulted her twice in remote spots along Highway 16.
The first assault allegedly took place in the front seat of his Volkswagen Beetle.
The second assault allegedly occurred on the grounds of the former Lejac Residential School, where both John and the witness were forced to attend, though they were not students there at the same time.
The witness claimed she was afraid to resist his assaults because he was her boss and her only ride back to Prince George.
"I did what he asked me to do ... If I said no, then what?" she said when defence lawyer Tony Paisana asked why she didn't fight back. "Would he have left me there for the bears?"
The alleged victim testified that the offences all occurred over the spring and summer of 1974 in the area of Prince George. But John's lawyers suggest the encounters happened the following summer, when the alleged victim would have been 14.
John is the hereditary chief of the Tl'azt'en Nation and was appointed to the B.C. cabinet as minister for children and families from November 2000 to June 2001. He is a prominent Indigenous leader and lawyer who has advised the First Nations Summit and helped craft the Charlottetown Accord as well as the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP).
The trial will continue this week.
Hockey Canada made nine settlements totalling $7.6M
from reserve fund: CFO
By Rachel Gilmore Global News
Posted July 27, 2022 9:13 am
Updated July 28, 2022 7:29 pm
Hockey Canada has paid out nine settlements from its National Equity Fund, totalling $7.6 million since 1989, the organization’s chief financial officer said on Wednesday.
“Out of the National Equity Fund, nine settlement payments have been made totalling $7.6 million,” confirmed Brian Cairo, speaking at a heritage committee meeting on Wednesday.
He added that $6.8 million of that total was related to Graham James, a former Canadian junior ice hockey coach who plead guilty to two counts of sexual assault in 1997. Uninsured settled claims make up another $1.3 million of the payouts, $1 million of which resulted from four incidents from a single perpetrator.
The organization also used the fund to pay for third-party investigator Henein Hutchison LLP to look into a 2018 group sexual assault allegation, according to Cairo. That payment totalled $287,000.
The fund is generated in part by children’s registration fees.
Reports surfaced last week that Hockey Canada maintained a fund that drew on membership fees to pay for uninsured liabilities — including sexual abuse claims. Last Tuesday, Hockey Canada said it would no longer use this fund for sexual abuse claims.
In addition to the National Equity Fund, in the late 1990s, Cairo said Hockey Canada added a sexual abuse component to their liability insurance. Since that time, the insurance has covered the cost of another 12 sexual misconduct settlements to the tune of $1.3 million.
That means, in total, Hockey Canada has settled 21 cases and paid out $8.9 million to complainants.
There is much more on this story at Global News.
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Review says Canada Soccer mishandled sexual assault
allegations against coach
Bob Birarda awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to 3 counts of sexual assault
Neil Davidson · The Canadian Press ·
Posted: Jul 28, 2022 12:22 PM ET |
Former Vancouver Whitecaps and Canada U-20 women's soccer coach Bob Birarda is seen above in June after pleading guilty to sexual assault. An independent review completed Thursday showed that Canada Soccer mishandled initial allegations against Birarda. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)
An independent review has concluded that Canada Soccer "mishandled" sexual harassment allegations in 2008 against then under-20 women's coach Bob Birarda, who is currently awaiting sentencing on sexual assault charges.
The 125-page report by McLaren Global Sport Solution, commissioned by Canada Soccer, paints a picture of a governing body "described by many as being dysfunctional and inefficient," with "significant leadership upheaval and transition at the highest levels" in 2007 and 2008.
It concludes a "complete lack of familiarity" with the harassment policy amongst Canada Soccer senior officials in 2008 and that "harassment was not a priority issue amongst the senior CSA (Canadian Soccer Association) leadership team" at the time.
It also says there was a lack of oversight over the women's under-20 team and that Canada Soccer did not follow its own harassment policy.
And it suggested that Canada Soccer just wanted the issue to go away at the time.
"The CSA press release that characterized Birarda's departure [in 2008] as being in the mutual interest of both parties without so much as addressing the harassment was a gross mischaracterization of the circumstances and failed the victims of the harassment, their teammates, and the organization as a whole," the report says.
"The leaders of Canada Soccer acknowledged to the IRT (independent review team) that mistakes were made in how the Birarda complaint process was managed and communicated including regrets that "we had taken a silent position on this," it added.
A 'silent position' is no position at all.
There is more on this story at CBC Sports.
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