S31 E9: If they were boys | The Banned Teacher

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Hello.

There she is.

Hey, Julie.

Hi.

Hey, Rita.

The two early birds on the west coast.

Hi, ladies.

Hey, Siobhan.

One by one, each woman pops up in a square on my computer screen.

Six small boxes.

They've become familiar faces to me and to each other.

Where are you, Siobhan?

I'm at home.

Oh, Ronald.

They fondly call this group the Blipsters.

That's because they are among the music teachers' blips.

Little blip number one.

That's survivor Jeannie McKay in BC with her wire-framed glasses, her salt and pepper hair.

Doug Walker told Ontario's teachers regulator the two years of sexual encounters with Jeannie, his teenage student, well, that was just a blip.

We now know she wasn't even his first blip.

Other girls from other schools came before Jeannie.

I'm glad I've found out that there's other women in the same place as me because that sense of sisterhood, of glipsterhood,

really helps make it feel

bearable.

On these calls, Jeannie is often joined by Anne-Marie, Jackie, Rita, Siffon, and Ali.

We've heard all their stories in previous episodes.

Today they've come together to hear about our visit to Sam's house.

the dad who punched the music teacher.

Sam served Anne-Marie and me tea in his spotless living room.

There were were tears and hugs.

Now I'm playing back some of the tape I recorded from that visit.

The other survivors want to hear his voice.

Afterwards,

I kind of regretted in my own mind

that

I did that because that's not the way a human should act.

In 1975, Sam found out his teenage daughter was having sexual encounters with her music teacher.

Sam told the principal.

They said they were going to dismiss him or at least move him out of the school.

Then he punched the teacher.

Former students say Walker left the school.

But

my emotions just got the best of me and

foolishly I reacted.

I

was so

angry that someone would take advantage of my girl.

Oh, I loved it.

I'm sorry that I'm

so blubbery, but I know.

Oh, God.

They all know Sam recently lost his daughter.

She's no longer around to talk about it or appreciate what he did.

And it makes the situation even more sad.

I see Jeannie leave the screen to grab a Kleenex box, and Allie holds her head in her hands.

Wow.

That poor guy.

That poor man.

There are no dry eyes.

You can feel his pain and his

rage.

Yeah.

That was rough.

Wow.

We can all adopt him.

They all resolved to send him notes and cards, and they do.

I don't have a dad anymore.

I don't either.

I never really did.

Oh, my God.

He's the one I need to go either.

I don't know.

There's just.

That's Allie.

She reported the music teacher after a band trip to Montreal in 1987.

And we were the same age, and that's how he looked at it.

And I've just felt a shift.

And I was like, there's nothing else to wait for.

For decades, Allie thought it was her fault after a 39-year-old teacher had sex with her, a teenage student.

student.

She now wants to put the blame where she says it always belonged.

It just washed over me that I feel like it's time.

Time to go to the police.

Because a conviction would make a difference.

The band teacher.

I'm Julie Irton.

This is season two of The Band Played On.

Survivors still crave justice.

New laws were enacted in the 1980s.

They made it illegal for those in positions of authority, like teachers, to have sexual relations with the young people they're in charge of, their students.

It's in Canada's criminal code.

And if I'm the only person who falls under the new laws, then I do have a responsibility.

I do.

And we discover inconsistencies in how police treat male victims versus female victims of historical sexual assault.

People that were boy victims do make out better in the process than women survivors do, than people that were girls at the time of the assault.

Episode 9, If They Were Boys.

Phil Mean, what has happened?

I had a phone call at 9 o'clock this morning and a voicemail and an email.

He is a detective constable with the York Regional Police, Major Crimes Bureau, Special Victims Unit, Cold Case Section.

Ali has just reported to the police in the Toronto area where she attended high school.

It's November 2022.

I just felt a little overcome yesterday.

I'm just like, it just washed over me that I feel like it's time.

We all gathered at Allie's Toronto home a few months ago in the summer with the cat and the dogs and the survivors.

Now she's taken a big step.

She's written to the police.

Please help to bring this serial predator to justice.

Allie has has lived with what happened to her for more than three decades.

So I sent in the narrative box.

In 1986, 1987, I was a new student in 11th grade at Markham High and became very active in the music program.

My music teacher, William Douglas Walker, was an important figure in my life.

And in early May 1987, our band went on a chaperone school trip.

He consumed alcohol with us, sexually harassed students, and on May 9th, 1987, had sexual intercourse with me in his hotel room.

I have an eyewitness who removed me from his hotel room at his request because I was too drunk to stand.

In the aftermath, Ali says the administrators slut-shamed her, but she's more eloquent in her words to the police.

I was interrogated and humiliated by all of the administrators, who never informed me that a crime had been committed.

I thought I was beyond the age of consent and had no idea that consuming alcohol or an adult being in a position of power changed the rules.

Ultimately, Mr.

Walker was simply moved to another school again, and I was left to endure the academic fallout and social shaming that continued throughout my time in high school.

Wow, what did it feel like to write that and then hit send?

Well, I had started it probably 15 times over the last two weeks.

I didn't realize until I met Anne-Marie and Janie, I didn't realize the scale of this.

And I didn't realize how deeply, deeply harmed.

Like, this changed, he's changed lives.

He's changed people.

You know, it started interfering with my sleep.

And this feels right to me.

And

there's been no justice.

There's been no justice.

for anybody in this story since 1973.

There's been no justice.

And if I'm the only person who falls under the new laws, then I do have a responsibility.

I do.

It's bigger than me.

New laws.

I've talked before about the changing landscape of Canada's sexual assault legislation.

A series of new laws were put in place in the 1980s.

These laws didn't exist when Anne-Marie Robinson and Jeannie McKay say they were assaulted.

The old laws took a narrow view on consent.

Had the girl gone to bed with a teacher willingly.

Those laws didn't consider grooming or the power imbalance between teacher and student, or a coach and a player, a doctor and a patient.

But in the late 1980s, a new criminal code violation was introduced called sexual exploitation.

This is how it reads.

Every person commits an offense who is in a position of trust or authority towards a young person, who is a person with whom the young person is in a relationship of dependency, and who for a sexual purpose touches directly or indirectly with a part of the body or with an object, any part of the body of the young person, or invites, counsels, or incites a young person to touch a part of the body.

And the definition of a young person here is someone under 18.

An adult being in a position of power changed the rules.

Ali shared the news about going to the police with the other survivors.

I told the ladies, I told the blips,

I told the blips in our Facebook group.

I said, I've made my report.

And there was much screaming

and

offers of support, you know, which is really wonderful.

Do you wish that

you had done this 35 years ago?

Or are you glad that you're moving forward as an adult, more aware of what the laws are?

I am so glad that things are unfolding the way that they are.

I kind of wish I'd had this information when I was 30.

I think I would have,

it wouldn't have derailed my life at 30.

It would have derailed my life at 17.

Now, Allie will wait to hear back from the police.

It's been a difficult few months for Allie ever since the women gathered at her Toronto home.

It dredged up long buried teenage memories, but it also reminded her of band, of making music.

She's back in touch with high school bandmates, and she's thought more about the importance of music in her life.

Sitting down at her piano and writing this song has helped.

I decided to try my hand at composing something that represented finding light and hope and love after a period of great darkness, which I think could apply to a lot of different situations.

And it's a distraction, taking her mind off the waiting.

But Allie doesn't have to wait long for a response from the police.

Just a week later, I get another call.

Hi, Julie.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, I can.

The police took Allie's complaint seriously.

Within a couple days, she was asked to go into a Toronto area station.

She gave a formal statement on camera.

I just can't believe how quickly he has acted on everything.

It's only been a week since she filed her first report.

The detective has just called.

He called me this morning

and said that he actually took everything to the Crown this morning.

Wow.

He's spoken to the prosecutor already.

I can't tell if it's anxiety or excitement in Allie's voice.

And it can't go anywhere.

What do you mean?

Well,

everybody's been wrong.

Wrong?

How is that possible?

The exploitation law came into effect on January the 1st, 1988.

The sexual exploitation law, making it an offense for a person of authority to have a sexual encounter with a person under 18.

It turns out the law was drafted in the mid-1980s, but it wasn't officially enacted into law until years later.

He said that fell under the exploitation change on January 1st, 88.

That was eight months after Allie's sexual encounter with her music teacher.

The detective told her there was nothing he could do.

He was so apologetic, Julie.

He's like, I'm so sorry that I can't do more for you.

I'm really shocked by this myself.

And he said, take a couple of days and think about

what you want to do.

I said, I just need some time to sit with this and think about it.

She was also thinking about Jeannie and Anne-Marie.

They've already been through this with the police.

So I am actually in the same boat as everybody else.

What he did was not illegal.

That wasn't all.

Allie had reported to Toronto Area Police, where she went to high school, but her encounter happened on a band trip to Montreal, a six-hour drive from home.

The detective told her since it happened in Montreal, he didn't actually have jurisdiction.

He's got my video statement, he's got all the documentation, and he's quite happy to send it over to Quebec if I want him to.

But I said, Well, if

there's no law,

then that just seems like a big waste of everybody's time and resources.

He said, I do think it would be a stretch.

Ollie's upset and still trying to absorb what the detective told her.

I just really wanted to tell somebody, and I didn't want to tell anybody who would be

devastated.

I thought you could handle the news.

Yeah.

I don't blame her for feeling upset.

It is disturbing, baffling, especially given my previous reporting experience.

I spent more than a year investigating crimes against teen boys for the first season of the band Played On.

In one case, we saw a former high school teacher led out of court in handcuffs.

He went to prison for touching boys over their clothing, propositioning them.

Many of those violations happened in the 1970s and 80s before new sexual assault laws were enacted.

This current case took place over the same time period and the women say their teacher raped them.

Yet police tell the women there was no law to protect them.

Under the law, how could there be such a different approach for boy victims and girl victims?

How can there be a double standard in Canada?

I need a legal expert to explain, so I go to an academic I've spoken to before.

She's in Vancouver.

My name is Janine Benedette and I'm a professor of law at the University of British Columbia.

My research focuses on laws relating to sexual violence against women and in particular the criminal law of sexual assault, the way that that's developed over time and the way that courts apply it today.

Okay, I've got the right person.

She joins me via video from her office at UBC.

People can only be punished for what was criminal at the time that they did it.

And so those older, we would say now, you know, antiquated and deeply problematic understandings of non-consent would govern in a criminal courtroom in 2023.

Well, we know all about that.

Anne-Marie Robinson lived it.

But now, once again, police have told Ali what the teacher did having sex with a student in 1987 was not illegal.

Now, it's not entirely correct, though, to say that there is nothing that could be used in those circumstances.

and there are cases where judges have been and crowns have been a bit more creative in kind of using other tools that were in the law at the time.

The tools Professor Benedett is talking about are different charges, laws that were already on the books and could be applied to cases that happened before 1988.

But they are charges not often used in crimes against girls, such as gross indecency.

Gross indecency doesn't require proof of non-consent.

It's based on kind of the standards in the community at the time about whether or not this conduct was indecent, whether it went beyond what we would tolerate individuals engaging in.

So it's not an unproblematic offense.

You know, it's got a kind of morals component to it.

It's been used in discriminatory ways.

In the past, the gross indecency law was used to convict gay men who had consensual sex with other men.

So it's definitely been a problematic law.

But for this kind of fact scenario, it's actually tailor-made.

She means a case where a teacher assaulted female students.

It's that profound breach of trust and the idea that they were manipulated

and

lied to and that their you know, their innocence and their trust was so grossly abused.

So why aren't the police looking at that charge?

The whole situation leaves the survivors indignant and furious.

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Was a little boy.

He'd already be in the back of the police car.

Yep.

The he Jeannie McKay is talking about is Doug Walker.

I've joined the blipsters on their regular call.

Allie has just filled them in.

I can't believe

they have done it again.

You know, like, really?

Do we all have to stand in front of the Crown's office with signs?

signs?

Raped by Doug Walker.

Raped by Doug Walker.

Doug Walker wanted to F me.

Like,

at what point does the Crown decide that this is not okay?

So

I was just so sorry for Allie.

I just saw the sorrow in your face.

Oh, my God.

I mean, I think it's just bullshit, honestly.

That's Anne-Marie.

I thought I had a good understanding of Canada's history and laws.

and I'm really shocked by this.

And I'm just shocked at the unequal treatment between men and women.

So what does it say?

Does it mean that any

female above the age of 14 who was abused by their teacher prior to 1988 has no legal recourse?

Is that what they're saying?

Whereas if you were a male, then there is a route for legal recourse.

I just find that unacceptable.

Anne-Marie doesn't think prosecutors are doing their jobs.

And I think there's possibilities there, but they're just not looking at this holistically enough and not trying to dig into it.

And I don't understand why.

I think the law has a responsibility when they know they have a predator with multiple complaints to take a deep and a broad look at what happened over a period of

1973 to at least 87, if not longer.

Jeannie cuts in.

I think it's really funny when you compare our two answers there

because you're the grown-up.

You're talking the policy, you're talking the laws, you're talking about it.

And I'm going, fuck.

This is the beauty of this group, right?

We have every one of us is a very different person.

Anne-Marie, you just so together.

I love you.

Well, I kind of see Anne-Marie as the deputy minister of the group.

No question.

I'm the sax player.

I'm ripping all over the place.

Allie is listening.

They validate her own anger and sadness.

She put herself out there.

This group gave Allie the confidence to tell the detective her story.

He asked me a lot of really specific questions.

Do you remember what sex acts you performed?

What was said?

What do you remember?

What was done?

And just the level of shame that's still there.

Police inaction only feeds that shame.

It doesn't take it away.

And it all leaves me with more homework to do.

I have more questions for the music teacher himself.

I haven't contacted Doug Walker in more than a year.

I corresponded with him before I published the initial investigation about Anne-Marie and Jeannie.

But now there have been many more allegations by many more women.

The former teacher needs an opportunity to respond.

I start writing down questions and I send him an email requesting an interview.

I wait to hear back.

Then I continue my legal research.

I Google, look up studies, read law papers, and contact people across the country.

But there's a provision in the criminal code that vitiates consent.

And I learn more about legal provisions than I ever thought I'd have to.

273.12c.

I chat with more academics, former Crown attorneys, legal advocates.

I seek out out those who know and understand old sexual assault laws and how they're applied to cases involving boy victims or girl victims.

This is a dysfunctional area of law.

Then during one of our chats, Anne-Marie remembers the first lawyer she ever spoke to about her case.

She asks me to find him.

I'm not sure if I hadn't talked to him, I'd be here now and we would have uncovered so much because he was so encouraging.

And he made me understand.

This was way back, about eight years ago, before she went to the police, before she met me.

The Ontario government had just set up a pilot program.

I heard about this program.

I don't remember where, probably on the radio or the newspaper.

And so I wanted to go talk to someone.

The program is free for victims of sexual assault.

It's available in several provinces.

It provides four hours with a lawyer.

What's great about this program is the lawyers that give you advice, they can't represent you in a civil case and they cannot represent you in a criminal case.

So you can feel like they can really give you the goods on how things work.

The lawyer she saw was Blair Crewe.

Yeah, so I'm Blair Crewe.

I'm the director of Queen's Legal Aid.

That's at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

I'm also the panelist advisor in the Independent Legal Advice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Pilot Program, operated by the government of Ontario.

Blair is a big man with a big smile and a warm laugh.

I can see how how he would have put Anne-Marie at ease.

He comes with years of experience at law clinics at two Ontario universities.

He hears from many victims, most of them women.

Some are calls for things that happened a long time ago.

Some are survivors in need of urgent advice.

Literally, they were sexually assaulted or raped within the past hour and need immediate advice.

He helped me start to put it in context.

Anne-Marie has come along to the interview with Blair.

Yeah, it's like coming full circle.

And she comes prepared.

Hi, Blair.

Hi, Anne-Marie.

She's wearing business attire and holds a notepad with her questions.

Since she first met Blair, Anne-Marie has learned so much more about the law.

Now she almost sounds like a lawyer.

She jumps right in.

The charge of gross indecency, I've noticed that it's commonly used where you have, in historic cases going way back to the 60s and 70s even, where you have a male teacher who's assaulted a male student.

And whereas when it's a female, they're not using that charge.

And so I know that the origins of that charge, gross indecency, is loaded with what I would consider negative homophobic reasons.

But notwithstanding that, the charge is there, it's available.

So why can't we use it now for assaults on girls?

It is probably the most bitterly ironic thing about some of this work that, you know, not universally, but that generally speaking, people that were boy victims do make out better in the process than women survivors do, than people that were girls at the time of the assault.

And

most of the laws, let's face it, were written by men.

So there was a sense at the time that anything that was any kind of coerced homosexual conduct, of course, was immediately a crime.

And I also think that there's something in that the legislators related to the role of men and said, you know, I would have hated to have gone through this.

So at the same time that the law was not doing an effective job to protect women and girls, it would do a much more complete job of protecting men and young men that were abused by people in position of authorities.

Sure.

But I just wonder, like, it appears there's a discriminatory application of laws, right?

If male victims can see a conviction against a former teacher for sexual assaults, but female victims can't.

I don't can't imagine anyone can't come to the conclusion that what happened to us wasn't grossly indecent.

So, if they can't apply it equally, then I think it's just full of misogynistic attitudes and homophobia and all the things that have been talked about before.

So, one thing that I have seen from time to time is looking in that discriminatory application of the law, that sets up the process that there might be a human rights complaint there.

Over 90% of the survivors of sexual assault are women.

Therefore, any differential treatment in the law that affects women or sexual assault survivors differentially than any victims of any other crime is going to be discriminatory treatment against women.

I've seen a couple of cases in which the outcome of the human rights process has been the police agree to go back and reinvestigate,

you know, or to take a different approach on if they ever did an investigation earlier.

I looked to Anne-Marie.

Would she go back to the police?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And even after you went through four and a half years and the re-victimization, you still would do that?

Yeah.

I think this has to be reconciled.

I think this has to be heard.

And this is the only system that we have.

I mean, I think governments

should also be looking at another way where victims and their abusers can get together and have these discussions.

But right now, this is all we have.

It's been several years since Blair Crewe first heard Anne-Marie's story.

He believed her then.

He believes her now.

She has so much more information, but as far as she's concerned, still no justice.

We don't have the same tools the police have.

So if we could find 12-plus victims,

why couldn't the police have found them?

They just didn't look.

And that's not acceptable to me.

All I got from that experience was they don't care.

I agree.

I think that that's exactly what it is.

I think that they didn't care to get to the truth of the allegations about what was going on.

I think the fact it's appalling, appalling that with the resources that you and Julie had, you were able to find so many other survivors so easily because they were there to be found if they had just looked.

Right.

Before the interview is over, Blair Crewe mentions one last thing, another crime that sometimes gets the attention of police and prosecutors.

The one thing that I do know is that the more the conduct against the female survivor involved sodomy, the more likely they are to use that as a charge even now.

Whereas if that was not there, there's a tendency to try and say, well, that it was indecent, it was improper, it was assault, but it wasn't gross indecency.

Okay,

that's all my questions.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

As the interview wraps up, Anne-Marie and I look at each other.

Blair's last comment caught our attention.

We're both recalling something that Jeannie has told us.

We've kept it to ourselves.

I didn't know if or when to bring it up, but I guess we should talk about it now because it seems relevant.

Actually, it's Jeannie McKay's story to tell, so I'm going to let her tell it.

But just a warning, there are going to be some graphic details.

How are you today?

I was fine to like one second ago when I saw your face and then I realized I was going to have to talk about this.

Oh.

I'm sorry that my face makes you sad.

It doesn't.

It makes me have great strength, actually.

Oh, that's good.

Jeannie's eyes are damp from the moment the computer links us together.

It's still the wee hours on the west coast in British Columbia.

Jeannie hasn't had her morning coffee.

She's a a teacher and wanted to talk to me before getting ready for her school day.

We chat for a few minutes.

Then she tells me again what happened to her as a teenager with her band teacher.

They were outside, lying under a tree.

Okay, so one night I guess he decided he was going to put something new in his repertoire.

And

he decided

to sodomize me with his finger.

And I just froze.

I didn't know what to do.

At that time of my life, I didn't even really know what that was.

And

at the end, he was all like, all cutesy.

Well, you'll have to tell me what you liked and what you didn't like.

And

I said, well, I didn't like that.

And

it's just,

I can even see where I was.

I can see the light of the trees.

It was outside.

And

so, like, I never talked about it ever.

And

the first time I even ever said anything was in...

counseling a couple years ago.

These are private, difficult memories about yet another indignity.

I just was

horrified and I felt, ugh, it was just,

I didn't know what to do and I sure didn't want to talk about it.

And Jeannie says there's a reason she didn't mention the anal penetration when she went to the police decades ago.

Never said anything 20 years ago and I made my complaint.

Naively, I thought that

simply being

raped by a teacher was good enough for the police to go, oh yeah,

this is a horrible predator.

Of course we'll go do something about it.

I thought that would be good enough, but

I don't know.

I guess the police thought, oh, you know, this is what girls do.

Nothing wrong with that.

Like, why is it bad?

She wanted this.

The whole issue of crimes against boys versus crimes against girls is preying on Jeannie's mind.

She imagines what was on the minds of the men who made the laws and the men who enforce them.

Sex with women is normal.

Sex with men is a sin.

Therefore, we're going to make laws about it.

Therefore, if it ever happens to a woman, obviously that's a sin.

And

therefore, he's a bad guy.

Like, it's as

yeah, it's as historic as that.

That's the roots of so many of our laws.

Despite the historic problems with these old laws, both Jeannie and Anne Marie want authorities to consider what happened to the survivors was grossly indecent.

And like Anne-Marie, Jeannie says she's willing to go back to the police.

Jail is what you do to people who break these laws against society.

And the fact that I've said one more thing that bears my soul

is not even relevant.

This is a particularly tough one, eh?

Yeah.

Yeah, I had to decide

if the world needed to know.

And obviously they do.

Okay, I'm going to stop recording.

We talk about our dogs to lighten the mood before we say goodbye.

Another tough conversation wraps up.

Doug Walker has always maintained the sexual encounters with these girls were consensual.

I ask him specifically about this latest revelation from Jeannie.

He says that never happened.

But I have 28 more questions for him, and I have requested an interview.

Walker says he'll talk to me over the phone.

We arrange a time.

Next time on the banned teacher.

Anne-Marie is back to work at a new job.

When I say I don't want this to happen again, it's because

I want 100% accountability.

There's thousands of victims, I suspect,

of teacher assault in Canada.

And then they have to care about the future and the existing students and put in much better systems and education.

Anne-Marie has found other survivors with similar goals.

One has a familiar voice from the first season of the band Played On.

I remember being taken by your

drive for change, your desire to say, okay, this happened, what are we going to do about it?

And Anne-Marie takes another important yet uncomfortable step in her own journey.

And then I want to go into the music room.

I want to see the closet at the back where he sexually assaulted me in the classroom.

You've been listening to The Band Teacher, ad-free on Apple Podcasts.

Thanks for subscribing.

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 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.