S31 E7: Club no one wanted to join | The Banned Teacher

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This is a CBC podcast.

The Markham High School Band more than 35 years ago.

It is a cassette tape from 1987.

Allie flips the cassette case over in her hands.

They made copies for students.

Allie played trumpet in that band.

In grade 11, her strawberry blonde hair was permed.

She had fair skin and freckles, often wore a baggy jean jacket.

But this event was formal.

The performers wore white shirts under navy blazers.

The music teacher sported a tuxedo.

I've seen the photos.

June 2nd, 1987, and it was our final band concert at the Markham Theater.

This was the music teacher's swan song.

He was leaving the school.

Yeah, there's a couple of songs here that I think really meant something to Doug Walker, and that's why he included them.

I know the RAF March Past would be connected to his history with the Royals.

The Wind Ensemble will now play

Man and Bean.

He was very, very emotional about this piece called Man and Bean, and he

closes his eyes and gets very swept into it and gets teary-eyed when he conducts that.

So I know that was his big,

big finish that night.

Yeah.

He was 39.

I cannot imagine getting sexually involved with a 17-year-old.

Ali was that 17-year-old.

I just wanted to get through this year.

And

I was having trouble attending classes.

I don't think I was attending rehearsals

anymore.

I just did what I had to do to get it over with because there was no way for me to not be in the band and participate in the concert without my parents asking why.

But I was at the concert, yeah.

And then it was just going to be over.

It's been more than three decades.

It will never be over for Ali.

That concert was a pinnacle moment.

He was leaving Markham High because of Ali.

Three weeks after I reported him.

So he would have just found out that he'll be leaving the school and this was going to be his last concert at the school.

So after you reported him,

he didn't have to leave the school or anything.

He got a big farewell.

Right.

Yeah, he finished out the school year and...

And went on to another band at another school.

The band teacher.

I'm Julie Irton.

This is season two of The Band Played On.

In 1987, Ali blew the whistle.

She was shunned and shamed.

He made me feel terrible that he was leaving the school.

What was he going to tell his wife?

The complaint came five years after Jackie Short reported the bandleader's bad behavior to an administrator.

And nothing was done.

By 1987, the music teacher had already worked at three different schools.

He would go on to move schools four more times before he left teaching.

These ladies all reported him, but he kept teaching.

Just this

feeling of

anger that he was able to do this to so many people.

Now, decades on, survivors are getting together for an inaugural meeting.

Now, I'm a member of a really bad club, and I just get angry that what brought us together was him.

Episode seven: the club no one wanted to join.

They're very friendly.

Okay, they just need some time to

hit it.

Welcome.

I'm back in Toronto.

It's a hot July afternoon.

Beyond this front door and the two dogs and a cat is a group of women I've come to know very well, but mostly from a distance.

This is not very nice wrapping, but that's a good thing.

I hand over a coffee cake, grip my microphone.

I plan to keep recording for the next several hours.

Today, we get to meet, chat, and eat cake together.

I did.

I had something like get you something to drink.

No, I'm good for now.

This is Ali's cozy 1930s era home with original wood trim.

As a real estate agent, these are the kinds of things she'd notice.

An upright piano sits on one side of the room, a fireplace on the other.

The women are here from all over.

So when did you get into town?

Last night?

Did she came to my house?

Yesterday.

Took the red eye Sunday night.

Whoa, Saturday.

These are the four founding members, but other affiliates will connect soon.

Anne-Marie Robinson, with her dark hair no longer hiding her green eyes, is finally with her people.

Jeannie, JM, is the first survivor Anne-Marie and I tracked down.

Then we met Jackie, the diary keeper and opera singer.

Ali, whose home we're in, came into the picture after my investigation was published a couple months ago.

The fact these women are now together is a marvel.

But here they are, face to face, catching up and taking stock.

Jeannie and Anne Marie still find it odd the police didn't connect them before I did.

We didn't know.

And the police wouldn't contact me.

The police refused to contact you, and

I kept asking them repeatedly.

Anne-Marie went to the police in 2017.

She had no idea Jeannie had already gone to another force in the Greater Toronto area about 10 years earlier.

But Anne-Marie did know there was another victim.

She knew someone had gone to the Ontario College of Teachers.

The name on the public document is blacked out.

Anne-Marie thought the police could find that woman.

We now know that woman is Jeannie.

Why would they not see if I wanted to be part of it?

That's pissing.

Detective Dr.

Mela kept saying, well, you know, victims don't like to have this all drenched up.

And it says, well, you can ask them and they'll tell you.

Yeah,

now he didn't have your name either, but I talked to also the Crown attorney and they said they could get your name if they put out a subpoena.

The Crown was interested, but the cops wouldn't do it.

So,

the police let you down

by not finding me.

They let me down by not putting out a notice looking for other victims.

They let, you know, and I, because I kept saying, let the victims choose.

Yes,

it was only Julie's work, the article, that got other, that got many people came forward.

So, we know they wanted to come forward.

And that is without having the methods that the police have.

Like, they have access to information, they can compel people to talk.

We've done all this through informal connections and our Jackie's Facebook power.

Exactly.

It's a super bow.

It's 101 Dalmatians.

It's the bar.

So can you imagine?

It's been black humor all day.

That's the coping mechanism.

They've come together with one main thing in common, and it's not pleasant.

So laughs are a reprieve.

There are four women in this room, aside from me.

Sometimes they talk over each other, interrupt, or change the course of the conversation.

Don't worry if you lose track of who's talking.

The message will be clear.

So we're in Allie's home.

The warm-up act is over.

It's time for Allie to share her story with us.

I'm not using her last name to protect her privacy.

She's already spent years trying to get beyond the shame of what happened in high school.

Julie,

can I read you something that I read to them before?

I had a conversation with him when we were at the Fine Arts Museum on the Montreal band trip and we were having a disagreement about something.

Allie is now in her early 50s, the youngest member of the club.

In May 1987, Allie was 17, strawberry blonde with the perm.

The Markham District High School band was on its spring trip, five days in Montreal.

Just like Jackie, Allie kept a journal.

She still has it.

She wrote about the music teacher too.

And

he said to me, you know, it wouldn't take much for me to lose control.

Sometimes it's hard for me to remember that I'm 39 years old and your teacher.

There are a lot of attractive and sexy girls in the band and you and your roommates are among them.

And just like in Jackie's diaries, Allie's journals reveal a teacher who insinuated himself into the teenager's orbit.

Yeah, and I'd forgotten some things, but of course, as soon as you read it, you're just like, oh my God, I remember.

I remember.

The last night of the Montreal trip, both she and the teacher were intoxicated.

She says he propositioned her.

They ended up in his hotel room.

She says she went willingly.

I had one friend who apparently came and retrieved me from his room.

I've spoken to her friends, girls who were there that night.

One says the teacher peeked into the hotel corridor.

He asked her to come get Allie from his room.

The friend says Allie was passed out on his bed.

Her pants were undone.

We were staying four people to a room, so all the people I was staying with that night knew what happened.

And, I mean, all my friends in the band, they knew what happened.

The teacher had sex with his 17-year-old student.

Allie's friends confirm her entire story, and one of them says the teacher propositioned her as well.

The next day, they headed home.

I just felt like I was so sick the next morning.

I mean, I was obviously extremely hungover, but I mean, I was sick from an emotional perspective.

And he came onto the bus.

And, well, the last thing he said to me the night before, before I left his room, was that,

I hope you still remember this tomorrow.

Because he knew I was so inebriated.

And the next morning on the bus, he came and he chucked me under the chin and he's like, and how are you doing today?

And I felt physically ill.

I couldn't even look at him.

And I turned into the window of the bus and I just spent the whole bus ride home curled into the window.

And when I went back to school, I went to see the guidance counselor and my specific words were, what could I tell you?

that you wouldn't be able to keep confidential.

And she said, unless you're going to hurt yourself or or someone else, there's nothing you could tell me that I would have to tell anybody else.

It'll be between you and me.

And so I told her everything.

And she wouldn't let me go back to class.

She kept me in her office for the whole afternoon.

And I told her everything about the trip.

I told her about the drinking.

I told her about him losing his temper.

I told her everything.

Including the sexual intercourse, oral sex.

And then the next day, I think, I can't quite remember, she pulled me out of class.

She said, yeah, I didn't realize this, but I'm going to have to report this.

And you're going to have to meet with the principal and the superintendent.

And

we're going to have to talk to Doug Walker.

And

then she said, or you can do it.

And so I had to go and tell him that I had told.

Yeah.

She says the responsibility was put on her, a kid, to tell the music teacher she had reported him

Then I started skipping school and my guidance counselor came and picked me up from my friend's house and dragged me back to school and then forced me to speak with the superintendent and

Yeah, it was all just really

distressing Yeah

Humiliating.

It was humiliating.

Yeah.

It was humiliating over and over and over and over.

It was humiliating humiliating on the trip and after the trip and the next year it was humiliating.

Her gaze is down.

She's petting a sleeping dog.

Its furry head is nestled against her on the couch.

I'm still having trouble looking people in the eye talking about it.

Even though we have told you that this is victim blaming,

absolutely not your fault.

Yeah, it's just shameful.

It's their shame.

Yeah, I understand that you feel the shame.

I understand it.

I just wish you didn't.

I don't think it's yours.

But

did you suggest to them maybe you should go to the police?

And they said something, like, how did that work?

Oh, my God.

The police never, never came into it.

It never crossed my mind there was a legal component to this ever.

Because I just thought I was beyond,

I was a few days after my 17th birthday.

So I thought, well, I'm far beyond the age of consent.

And I just, I never occurred to me that the police could be involved.

So when she said, I have to report it, I just knew she was talking about the principal.

And I was worried.

I was worried about not being able to finish the year.

I was worried about them.

My main concern was them telling my parents.

And I said, please don't tell my parents.

And they made me sign something,

some sort of release, so that they wouldn't tell my parents.

And

how did Doug treat you after you had to go and tell him that you had told

the administrators?

Well, I started off by saying,

I mean, I hadn't been to his class and I said, listen,

I'm so upset about what happened.

I can't be in the band anymore.

And he goes, I know.

He interrupted me and he said something like, I know, I know,

I'm so upset by it too.

I'm so upset by it.

I'm going to leave the school.

And I said, well,

I've already spoken to my guidance counselor and she's told Mr.

Nikki Fork.

And he said, you what?

Mr.

Nikki Fork was the school principal.

Ollie says, Walker was upset.

And he goes, What am I going to tell my wife?

And his eyes filled with tears, and he started crying.

We were in the hallway outside the music room.

And I don't remember much more of the conversation.

I just, I was shaking, and I can't remember why.

Like, for some reason, I had to be the one to tell him.

Or they did give me a choice, but yeah, he was

just really upset and then

very cold.

Did the school, the superintendent, the principal, the guidance counselor make you feel like this was your fault that you had done something wrong?

Oh,

yeah.

The interview/slash interrogation

where it was just

My guidance counselor had photocopied all of her notes and spread them out in duplicate around the table.

So everybody sitting at the table had copies of what I had thought was a private session with my guidance counselor and there was nothing redacted or it wasn't as though she only shared a relevant portion.

So, you know, there was a lot going on.

My parents were splitting up.

I'd had

a lot of issues at the time.

And it was just all there on the table for all these middle-aged men to see and judge and make me feel judged and I was absolutely there's no other word for it but slut shamed

yeah

yeah

and everybody mishandled it again and again and again

and again

when you go back to these memories it's very hard not to be the 17 year old girl experiencing that humiliation and shame again yeah and you're not that girl anymore you are a fully functional woman Successful.

You're a powerful, beautiful, successful person

who, because this is so traumatic, when you get these questions asked, you go back to the age you were and you kind of revisit the depth of that.

And that humiliation you went through is horrific.

But you were so articulate.

Like you told...

I don't know, it just captured me too.

So powerful.

We're out here gesticulating with massive big fists and how it is so clear how wronged you were I guess yeah

not just by him but then specifically re-traumatized by the system and that's terrible for sure

we've told our secrets and it's not our secret anymore it's his shame it's his shame yeah that's what stuck with me that's what you said on a zoom call when you said to me It's not our shame, it's his shame.

Yeah.

The encounter between the music teacher and Ali took place on a spring band trip.

Allie reported to her guidance counselor as soon as they returned.

There were only a few weeks left in the school year.

The music teacher finished out the year at Markham High.

In June 1987, he conducted that last concert in his tuxedo.

It's under the direction of our fearless leader, Mr.

Doug Walker.

The students gave him an emotional send-off.

It's on that cassette tape Allie shared with me.

I don't believe Doug Walker's voice is on this tape, but it's our band playing our final concert.

Several former students and teachers have told me what they heard back then.

It was a rumor the music teacher had been caught drinking alcohol with students.

He'd broken the rules.

He was moving schools.

At the time, only a small group of people knew the real reason he was leaving.

Ali knew.

Other than the one confrontation that I had with him in the hallway when I told him that I had gone to my guidance counselor,

I never spoke to him.

I didn't speak to him again.

None of us had the impression that the administration should have taken greater legal steps.

We were all just

horrified that they just moved him to another school, but there was just a I'm told by a current professor of family law that having sex with a student should have been the legal basis for the teacher's dismissal in 1987.

In other words, Walker should have been fired.

But the expert tells me this didn't occur very often, and we know it didn't happen in this case.

It was common just to move teachers.

My questions and freedom of information requests to the school board have provided no answers.

As I've mentioned before, the board says no records exist.

The music teacher moved to another school within the same board, but Ali says rumors continue to swirl.

You know, I heard a rumor about the European trip that he had done something with a girl on the European trip about six years before I was there.

It was just gossip.

The European trip.

That's the one our diary keeper, Jackie Short, told us about.

It's when she reported Walker to an administrator on a boat trip in Germany.

I mean, none of us had any idea

what we were dealing with here.

I thought it was just me and maybe this other girl, and I just wanted to forget it.

After he moved to the next school, he still taught music, led the band, but he would not be the head of the music department there.

That was his demotion.

You know, he made me feel terrible that he was leaving the school, that he was taking a demotion, that, you know, what was he going to tell his wife?

That spring, Jackie was away at university she had graduated five years before but she heard the music teacher was heading to another school the news was spreading on the alumni grapevine one very brave student had gone through the administration at markham high

and got walker moved well moved fired whatever they did and we just didn't know who it was and we were just like who what's this girl And then we found her.

We found her.

I just think it's amazing you knew that there had to be.

We heard her.

There had to be a she.

It wasn't just, oh,

he was transferring.

He was deciding.

No, but he was talking about

who was a girl.

And I knew this girl had gone through the guidance counselor to the principal

and went through the right tracks.

I heard that.

I don't know who I heard it from.

Heard it from the rumor mill.

Yeah, and I thought, Good for her, finally.

These ladies all reported him, but he kept teaching.

I didn't report him until 20 years ago.

Right, but you got him fired, right?

You got him fired.

It's crazy that they didn't really do anything.

He left Markham.

That's not a solution to anything.

No, they transferred him.

Yeah, they transferred him.

They transferred.

They demoted him.

Yeah.

And then, as you say, I had no idea.

A year later?

A year later, he's the head of music again?

Yeah, there's the whole point of child protection.

That should have been their objective.

And it had nothing to do with that and Anne-Marie you did something too like these women all did something you came to me yes and if you hadn't come to me none of us would be here that's true can I do that this club wouldn't exist without Anne-Marie they wouldn't all be together sharing their truths but why did officials never tie any of these stories together There are three women in this room who went to authorities when he was still teaching.

Jackie told an administrator in 1982.

Nothing was done.

Allie told senior administrators in 1987.

He moved to another school.

Jeannie, JM, went to police about 10 years later.

Ann-Marie quotes from Jeannie's police file in the late 1990s from memory.

She's recalling information police obtained from the school board.

It says that they couldn't do anything because they had no record of any complaints against Walker.

Right, right.

That means Jackie's 1982 complaint wasn't heeded or documented, nor was Ali's 1987 report to a principal and a school board superintendent.

Jackie told the vice principal in 1982.

And he was still the vice principal when Allie was there five years later.

And he was there when I was in grade 12.

So it's ridiculous.

To Anne-Marie, it makes no sense.

Right.

Now that that is outrageous.

Like, absolutely outrageous.

Because we know there's two people sitting in this room who

made complaints about him.

And

we know a superintendent was in the room with one of you.

And not having records is not an excuse.

They just had to talk to people who were around at the time.

Anne-Marie, the policy wonk, has continued her research.

She hopes to advocate for change.

She now has a better understanding of the gaps in rules for teachers and the laws protecting kids.

She knows those gaps are still problematic today.

Sexual assault laws changed in the 1980s.

It later became an offense for a person of authority, including a teacher, to have a sexual encounter with a person under 18.

The crime is called sexual exploitation.

Anne-Marie thinks this law could apply to what happened to Ali.

What bothers me is I don't understand why school administrators in 1987 didn't understand the law.

Society had evolved to a point where the whole point was to make that clear and to prevent it.

And how could people responsible for children not know that?

I just don't understand.

Exasperation hangs over the room.

They need a break.

It's time for cake.

And yearbooks.

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I'm getting worried.

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Is it a murder?

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Wow.

Here's some pictures.

Nice walker.

Allie cuts the coffee cake.

Jackie pours the tea.

Other beverages are passed around, poured into glasses with long stems.

Yearbooks, diaries, journals, and band trip photos are scattered across the wooden table.

Look at him.

Have you seen these pictures, Julie?

No, I'm going to.

There's another one.

He looks wasted.

Okay, here is the band.

I can't believe you've got this one.

I know, really.

I don't know if it's ego or laziness.

Allie hasn't seen Jackie's diaries before now.

She's the youngest of these survivors.

I can tell she's overwhelmed, yet comforted by this invasion of her home.

This is all so new to her.

How do you feel about this fellowship that now exists?

I feel so

first empowered,

second, supported, and third, angry.

And fourth, sad.

What makes you angry?

Tears well in her eyes.

Should I start out with what makes you sad?

Hmm.

No, it's kind of the same thing.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Just that somebody could be this diabolical.

Jeannie gets out of her chair, comes over to where Allie is sitting, arms wide open.

Here comes a hug.

And that other people let it happen.

Yeah.

It's a long time to feel bad about something and to feel like you're alone.

How do you feel about not being alone anymore?

Much better.

Much better.

Yeah.

It was not a good time.

It was not a good time in my life.

You were only 17 then, I guess, eh?

Yeah.

I was 16 when I moved to the school and started in his class.

And 17 when this happened.

Yeah.

So you had to go to the school for another two years after that.

Yes I did.

Yes I did.

Did your parents ever find out?

They never found out at the time but you have a you have a different support family here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you

a sisterhood.

A blipsterhood.

Yeah.

Well and and

not only you are you believed, but

you're not alone and

there's people that know exactly how you feel.

They're helping reframe something that I didn't even realize needed to be reframed.

But when you can't look people in the eye and you can't talk about something without crying, clearly it's not completely processed.

In two months, what's your first time?

But that's okay.

That's okay to, you know, that's...

These things didn't happen to me and yet I still get teary when I

talk talk to you all too.

Like,

this is painful stuff we're bringing up again,

and being asked intimate questions about, so it's okay to be.

But it's good.

It's good.

It's good to be asked the questions, and it's good to go through the memories, and it's good to share them.

Because, yeah, it really is a very, very isolating experience.

For more than 35 years, Ali has lived with this, mostly on her own.

But everyone in this room, in the club, is trying to figure out how it could have happened over and over.

They feel like victims of gaslighting, stuck in their own heads too long, unsure about what's real.

When authorities didn't act, was it really because there was no crime?

I'm going to leave the clubhouse for a bit.

and introduce you to a woman who spent her career researching the abuse of children, people from age 0 to 18.

This is someone who can give us some perspective.

I've spent my whole academic life, which goes back about 50 years now, exploring women's and children's experiences in difficult social, political, religious, economic situations.

My name is Beverly Chalmers.

Her research started in her home country, South Africa, but her work is international.

Canada is home.

I live in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Okay, and you have a book?

Right, this book is called Child Sex Abuse, Power, Profit, and Perversion.

And that's how I see the whole picture.

Beverly has a lot of initials after her name, including a PhD in psychology.

I explained the dilemma of the women in the club, how authorities have perceived what happened to them.

There's a perception that there's no crime.

I think it is always a crime.

Teenagers are groomed and

they are encouraged to develop a friendship, a trust with the older teacher.

And of course, teenagers do go through difficult periods with their families or their parents, or they may come from difficult, vulnerable situations.

And then you trust someone who shows you love and friendship.

So it's just easy to be compliant with that person.

But can you give consent?

Even if you go along with it for for whatever reason, do you understand the implications of it?

Can you understand the consequences of it at that age?

I doubt it.

So for me, it's a crime.

The obligation and the onus is on the perpetrator and on the teacher to

not

abuse the child.

And Beverly says, when the victim is a girl, there are even more opportunities for disparity.

It's easy to blame the girl.

And blaming the victim is another major problem problem in this whole story.

So often, the girl child is regarded as being compliant because that's what we expect.

But you didn't fight back.

You went along with it.

You came back for more.

It's your fault.

And it's easier to say that when it is a girl as opposed to when it is a boy, because we don't expect homosexual interactions to be that common.

But with girls who are abused, we just think, oh, it's her fault.

She did it.

But blaming the victim is a common problem in this whole story from beginning to end.

You asked for it, you know, you didn't argue, you didn't fight too much.

Which helps explain why people don't talk about it or report it.

And I don't blame anybody for not coming forward.

I think it is absolutely amazingly heroic for people to come forward years later.

And I don't care if it takes 20 years, 40 years, 50 years to report what happened.

It is so difficult to be believed and to be regarded with respect and treated with sensitivity because we as a society still don't allow it.

Not only were the children abused, but then the schools covered them up, moved the teachers somewhere else.

I mean, the Catholic Church has been roundly and soundly chastised for this, but that's what happened.

These teachers got off, and these institutions got off.

Back to the clubhouse.

It's well into the evening when someone new arrives at the door.

A surprise visitor.

Another member of the club.

Oh my God.

I'm Jeannie.

Hi, Jeannie.

Welcome to my travel.

Oh, God.

No.

No, we're a powerful club.

I'm Jackie.

We haven't met yet.

These are the two singers.

Anne-Marie.

My Anne-Marie.

I wasn't sure if this mystery guest would make it tonight, but here she is, a deer in the headlights.

This new member only recently got in touch with me.

Wow.

We have been talking non-stop since 1-11, Jackie.

Well, that's why I thought if I got here now, you'd be all talked out.

No, Marie.

She doesn't know any of these women.

They've never met nor spoken.

I had just spoken to her the day before for the first time.

She got in touch with me after she found out about my investigation.

This woman fills in a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Knowing she'd be welcome, I threw out the invitation.

And here she is.

I'm just smelling you because you're so brave.

I'm just.

I'm brave.

I'm looking at you going, look at you walking right into this group of girls.

You know, we don't know.

Like, like, you are so brave.

I'm so proud of you.

No, no, no.

So you're in Port Credit.

She's the first victim in NOAA.

Wow.

Yeah.

SiFon attended Port Credit Secondary School, also in the Greater Toronto area.

It was the music teacher's first official post.

SiFon sang with his band in the mid-1970s.

She later became a teacher herself.

I taught drama, acting, singing, dancing.

Schiffon is blonde and fit, wears a casual summer dress.

She drove about 35 kilometers to get here to meet the others.

Anne-Marie and Schiffon quickly discover a familiar pattern.

That's what I'm talking about.

I was like, love his life that he was going to marry me.

Oh, me too.

Me too.

And I was 13 or 14 actually believing that.

Yeah, well, our stories are a lot alike.

We had longer-term, I'm not going to call them relationships, but longer-term experiences.

Longer sentences.

Yeah, longer sentences.

That's a good way to put it.

I'm like two at mine and one year.

You know, my girlfriend and myself.

Yeah.

She means two alleged victims of sexual abuse at her school, same music teacher.

The women in this room encountered the teacher at three different schools over a 13-year period.

They compare notes.

What did happen to you, though, with Walker?

SiFon and her friend at Port Credit Secondary School.

They came first.

74.

Then Anne-Marie at Eastern Commerce.

I'm 76, 77.

Yeah.

Then Jeannie, Jackie, Allie, and there are others we know about at Markham High.

80 to 82.

79-ish.

Rita is the same time as you.

And a little earlier.

Yeah, we have like we have 17 names.

I do have a growing list of women who say they were sexually harassed or assaulted as teen students by the same teacher.

I've spoken to more than a dozen alleged victims, but not everyone wants to speak publicly about what they went through.

I understand that.

Others will eventually join the club, but it'll take some time.

SiFon has taken a big step just coming here, and she's asked me to only use her first name.

SiFon was younger than the others when it happened to her.

He always called me Jailobait.

So, you know, did he actually say that?

He called me Jailbait all the time.

He would say, come here, Jell-O-Bait.

He'd take me by the hand in the cafeteria, pull me out of the cafeteria, into the auditorium, and say, come on in here, I'm going to rape you.

Oh!

And I'm, when I I met him, 13.

What?

And what did you say to that?

Well, it was like a joke.

This was the charm.

You know, this was the whole, haha, he wasn't really gonna do that, of course.

But then you get in this auditorium that was saved for performances where nobody else was, and it was dark, and nobody's there.

And, you know, he was sitting uncomfortably close and would put his arm around you, and he'd have some, I can't even remember what he dragged me in there to talk about because, of course, it was nothing.

Siobhan says she was molested by the teacher after she turned 14.

Hands down my top, hands down my pants, and I'm 14, but he did not repent you with me.

Exactly.

Because there had to be a line because I was jailbait.

She's trying to make light of a heavy topic, but Siobhan says it was a loss of innocence.

He'll touch you in a way that is a grown man way to touch you, and he knows how to touch you, and he knows how to make your body respond.

And then you feel shite because why am I having these feelings?

And why I must want it if blah blah blah, you know.

Yeah, sexual arousal doesn't mean permission, it's not consent, it's just your permission.

But you think it does, but it's also hard to dial back and find your innocence again.

Do you know what I mean?

It's been hours since the coffee cake.

They've shared stories all day, and everyone needs to eat.

Yeah, food, even from that port.

She's got talent, this woman.

I microwaved it myself.

She bought it.

I nuked it.

Spoons are not so helpful with noodles.

No, but we can choose our first before we lick them.

I am.

The women fill their plates.

Find a seat around the table.

There's a vegetarian pad thai and a chicken pad thai.

The noodles are vegetarian, and that's a bas of chicken.

And these noodles are left cold, just for a change.

Anne-Marie has been waiting patiently for a lull in the conversation.

She has a question for Siobhan.

Anne-Marie wants to know about something rumored to have happened at Port Credit Secondary School School when Siobhan was there.

And he told me this story about how he was punched in the face

by a father of a student at Markham.

And until we found you, that's credit.

Oh, Port Credit, sorry.

The teacher told Anne-Marie the punch story right after her band trip to Belleville at the start of what she calls his abuse and what he calls consensual sex.

How many times has Anne-Marie repeated that story about the punch?

Yeah, it's been with me my whole life.

I wasn't sure what to do and that was his process of trying to suck me in and he's I started to feel sorry for him which was a way that he operated with a lot of us was making us feel sorry for him.

But SiFon knows the punch story too.

Had it not been for the punch in the face I might not have known at that point what had happened, right?

For Siffon, it explained the music teacher's sudden departure from her school.

She says the teacher had been touching her sexually.

Here's a sequence of events.

I know what happened on the the band trip because I shared a bed with her.

SiFon says the teacher also shared a bed with her friend who was 16 at the time.

I can't reach out to her.

She recently died.

But SiFon says the other girl's father found out about the alleged sexual abuse.

The dad went to the school.

He told an administrator.

So her dad is this.

Even now, her dad is this tall, handsome,

strong guy out of a movie.

That strong guy, he hit the teacher.

It kind of sounds like out of a movie too.

After the punch, he was gone the next day.

At least that's how I remember it.

Oh, yeah.

The teacher left Port Credit Secondary School long before the school year was over, and he ended up at Anne-Marie's school a few months later.

In 1975, the punch and being forced to leave the school should have sent a strong message.

Sexual encounters between teachers and students were wrong.

But it appears a pattern was set, a pattern that would repeat at different schools with different girls.

And Anne-Marie says rather than stopping that kind of inappropriate behavior, he used what happened at Port Credit to manipulate her.

And for me to find out that that story was actually true was just so amazing.

He used it in my case to groom me.

Anne-Marie would really like to meet that father.

But I know the father would not want to talk to her.

Yeah,

there's just no way.

Whisper in his ear, he's our hero.

He's our total hero.

And it's not about the punch.

And his part of the story is really important to us.

And we don't even know him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm all right.

It's because he's an adult who did something.

He reported the alleged abuse to the administration.

These women have so little evidence other adults tried to stop the abuse.

He did everything he could for his daughter.

And I'm like, I love you for that.

And I swear I should just write him a note and just pop it in in the mailbox.

You should tell him how to do it.

And I should just tell him that there were, because he would have known.

They all like that idea, reaching out to the father.

Punched, punched daddy.

Call him punch daddy.

Yeah,

probably a good name for him.

But for now, it's time to say goodbye.

The inaugural meeting is coming to a close.

It's like, and now I'm a member of a really bad club.

But I'm so glad I came because it's healing.

I just get angry that what brought us together was him.

But look how fantastic we are, and we we would never have met if it weren't for this awful situation.

I asked Doug Walker about allegations made by Ali and Siffon.

He declined to comment.

Next time on the band teacher.

There's now a whole group of us who were abused by this man and you are the only adult in our story who did something about it.

The band teacher is investigated, reported, written, and hosted by me, Julie Irton.

Allison Cook is the story and script editor, producer, sound designer, and mixer.

Felice Chin is our executive producer and story editor.

Eve Saint Laurent is our legal advisor.

Jennifer Chen, Amanda Pfeffer, and Jen White provided valuable production advice.

Special thanks to the folks at CBC Podcasts for their support.

The managing editor of CBC Ottawa is Drake Fenton.

If you want to binge the whole series, subscribe to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts.

Just click on the link in the show description or binge listen for free by logging in to CBC Listen.

If you or someone you know has been sexually abused, community resources can help.

Reach out to a trusted person, sexual assault center, or rape crisis center in your area.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.