From MacLeans Magazine six years ago

This article is published for the education and edification of the students in digital watchers.

There are points of contention contained within this article because the choice of interviewees was spectacularly narrow. If further discussion is needed than okay, ready to rumble. Most of the contents in this article are consistent with what I was able to ascertain in the twenty years of being familiar with the TWNBMB environment.

Due to accuracy the name of TWNBMB is published. It will be the only time this happens.

Pictured is the principle Vice Principal as the subject of the horror, Reeve William Springer. It is the picture of evil incarnate. Standing in back is Member of Parliament at the time, Keith Penner. Investigations have led us to believe that Penner had nothing to do with Springer beyond the political context although they were both members of the Liberal Party. This photo has been provided by the archives of Black River Graphics.


Marathon Sued over Sexual Abuse

PAUL PARENT HAS NEVER before spoken publicly about the abuse he endured as a young teenager. Between the ages of 12 and 14, he was molested by a man who was both his teacher and the top elected official of the small town where he grew up. Two decades later, Parent, now 32, is at the kitchen table of the modest home he shares with his wife and two children. It is a Saturday night and he's drinking Molson Export. He is wearing a Maple Leafs sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, revealing ham-sized upper arms and the outline of a tattoo on his right shoulder. Since last July, he's been working with an artist to create the tattoo's design, based on a concept he's had in mind for years. It is an unholy image of a man, grasped under his arms from above by an angel. From below, he is being clawed by a devil. It will take three sessions to plant the ink under his skin. "This is me - the eternal struggle between heaven and hell," says Parent. "I've always felt like that, like I'm caught."

From 1982 to 1984, Parent was sexually molested by Bill Springer, the teacher and reeve (in a township, the equivalent of a mayor), who died in 1992. Today, Parent is suing the town of MARATHON, Ont., where he grew up, and the school board that employed Springer, for $45 million, claiming they did not protect him when he was a boy. His lawsuit is the second to be filed against the municipality and the board in connection with Springer, a convicted serial abuser, and could trigger more, including a class action suit. It lands at a time when the law regarding past abuse is evolving rapidly - and with the courts increasingly sympathetic to victims, similar cases could spring up across the country, says legal expert Mayo Moran. "There's going to be a lot of calling to account," she predicts. But for Parent, just speaking about what he endured is very difficult. "This is very emotional," he says.

Parent was just one of many. After teaching children aged 11 to 14 for almost 25 years, Springer was charged in the fall of 1984 with 53 counts of sexual assault, indecent assault and buggery involving young boys. His victims are believed to number in the dozens. He pleaded guilty to 10 counts and was sentenced to two years less a day in prison. In addition to being a teacher and Marathon's reeve, Springer, 47 at the time of his sentencing, was active with the Scouts and president of the Minor Hockey Association and of the Lions Club. He was also head of the Thunder Bay Municipal League, director of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and chairman of the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Advisory Council. In the small, rough-hewn milltown of Marathon, Springer was a big man.

Parent was one of the boys who gave a statement to police. He also travelled to Thunder Bay, ready to testify at Springer's trial. (Since Springer admitted guilt, no witnesses were called.) What Parent wasn't prepared for was his own father's reaction. Tony Parent tormented, and blamed, his son. "I got the comments: 'Why didn't you stop it, why didn't you kill him?'" Paul Parent recalls. He folds a beer bottle cap between his thumb and index finger and drops it into an empty sitting on the table. His children, a boy who has just turned 13 and a daughter, 11, play on the computer in the next room as Parent talks about his father. "He said, 'You must be gay.' He called me a homo, he called me a faggot."

In the early hours of Jan. 12, 1986, six months after Springer went to jail, Parent attacked and killed his father, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and back. His mother and sister were also injured in the melee. Parent, then 15, was given the maximum sentence for manslaughter, three years in a tough juvenile detention centre. The judge, rejecting a psychiatrist's call for leniency, said Parent was under the influence of alcohol, heavy metal music and a preoccupation with the devil. During the trial, the abuse from Springer did not come up at all.

Parent's lawsuit against Marathon and its school board blames Springer's "malicious" conduct for a deterioration in the relationship between him and his father. Parent says the abuse caused him to suffer a breakdown, which in the end led him to kill his father. In his statement, Parent says Springer's misuse of authority "to control, manipulate and extort was cruel and sadistic."

THE TOWN OF MARATHON sits on the north shore of Lake Superior, roughly halfway between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, along one side of a small bay dotted with islands of spruce trees. The surrounding landscape - the humpbacked hills of the Canadian Shield, the sweeping vistas of lake and sky, the seemingly endless forests - is quietly beautiful. Five kilometres off the Trans-Canada Highway, and protected from the wide-open side of the lake by a hill, Marathon feels sequestered and remote. It dates to the 1940s, when Marathon Paper Mills Co. built a pulp mill that still operates. The town's first homes, built by the company - and even heated with its steam - cluster around the mill, which spews a white plume high into the sky. In 1985, around the time of Springer's conviction, three gold mines opened in the area, and the town roughly doubled in size as workers flooded in.

Today, Marathon is well-off - at $70,000, the average annual family income is well above the national figure - and its wealth is visible: campers, boats, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles line many driveways. In early December, the wind was blowing out toward the lake, leaving only faint whiffs of the often powerfully putrid mill fumes. Another, more comforting, smell was in the air - smoke from burning wood in fireplaces and stoves in people's homes. Like many northern resource towns, the population, at 4,700, is slowing thinning.

In the 1970s and early '80s, when Paul Parent was growing up, the population was about 2,300. His father, like most, worked in the mill. It was a small enough place that everyone knew their neighbour's business; children walked to school on their own. Even today, back and front yards all run into each other: there are no fences. Wendy Bell, a long-time resident and an early, unsuccessful whistle-blower on Springer, says the tight community made people feel safe. Gerald Graham, Thunder Bay's afternoon CBC Radio host, grew up in Marathon and recalls a carefree childhood, building tree forts and listening to the Beatles. "It was an isolated little town along the shore of Lake Superior," says Graham, now 50. "There was an innocence about it."

Perhaps the isolation, and the innocence, was part of the appeal to Bill Springer, who arrived in 1960 at age 23, hired to teach Grade 8. By 1969, Springer was called Marathon's "voice of minor hockey" by the local weekly, and he was running for a seat on the municipal council. He'd already become involved with Cubs and Scouts, and was the school's vice-principal. By the time Parent was in his Grade 6 class, Springer had been reeve for 11 years, a pillar of his community. Former students who, like Graham, weren't molested remember Springer as a flamboyant, jovial teacher. "Marathon," says Graham, "was the perfect place for a guy like Springer to pick - it was miles from everywhere and everybody had young kids. He preyed on the naïveté of people like me."

Springer was often around adolescent boys, says Bob Cheetham, a police officer in Marathon from 1978 to 1985 and one of the three cops who busted Springer in 1984. "There was always a kid in the front of Bill Springer's pickup truck," he says. Just over a year after arriving in Marathon, Cheetham says he began to hear "little things about some improprieties, that Bill Springer was involved in sexual activities, but nothing very tangible." Still, Cheetham mentioned the rumours to his chief, whose advice was to keep an ear to the ground. No formal investigation was launched.

Stephen Boon, who grew up in Schreiber, a nearby township with an intense hockey rivalry with Marathon, had heard about Springer, too. Boon, who today is a friend of Parent and who remembers brawling with him on the ice as a teen, says Springer was well-known among hockey players because he offered board to the visiting teams. "He made an attractive environment for those kids he lured," says Boon. "It was common knowledge among players. He offered 15-year-old boys everything they wanted: booze, porno, the run of the house."

Springer also brought groups of three or four boys to his cabin on Lake Wabikoba, about 45 minutes from Marathon. Parent says they'd start drinking around noon, and the boy who was most drunk would sleep with Springer. Parent has a recurring nightmare, still: he is a boy, back at Springer's cabin, and is very drunk. He's stumbled outside to throw up. He is trying hard to convince himself that what just took place in Springer's bed didn't actually happen. He returns to the cabin and pauses: just inside the door is a rifle, and he considers picking it up and shooting Springer. But he doesn't know if it is loaded and is scared to death of what Springer would do to him if it doesn't fire.

In recounting the story, Parent stops and says the dream, to this point, is a replay of what really happened to him as a boy. As the nightmare continues, though, he picks up the rifle, aims and pulls the trigger. There is nothing but a dead, empty click. He wakes up, panicked and in a cold sweat.

PARENT HAS A WAY of creating an impenetrable, guarded look about himself, as though he's pulled an invisible hood down low over his eyes. He is six-foot-four and weighs 250 pounds. His shoulders are enormous. He has a temper, he says. Until last fall, he wore his hair long, to his shoulders. His friends call him Banger, because he's a fan of heavy metal. Like many men his age, he has a goatee, but Parent's is long and shaped low on the edge of his chin, almost like a tufted lion's beard. Grey has begun to creep in on one side. For years, he says, he tried to bury the horror of the abuse. A social worker raised it about a year into his sentence, but he refused to open up. "That's the last thing you want people inside to know - that you were molested," he says. "I just sat there and looked at her and said, 'You know what? Nothing happened. Let it go. I don't want to talk about it.'"

Speaking out is very hard, still, and it is risky. He is concerned for his children, and worries about how other kids will treat them. He requests their names not be printed and forbids photographs. Last fall, he sat down and told them the truth about their grandfather's death. It was the hardest thing he's ever done, he says. But he has launched this lawsuit, he adds, partly for his children - to protect them from ever being abused.

Joe Rule, a 36-year-old man who has spent much of his adult life in jail, launched the first lawsuit against Marathon and its school board, claiming $12 million. He was abused by Springer from the age of 12 to 17, he says. He has had severe substance abuse problems, but is now sober and working hard to get his life in order. As a child, he was hit in the head with a baseball bat by another child and suffered brain damage. There is often a blank look in his eye. Like Parent, he lives in Thunder Bay. Parent launched his challenge after reading of Rule's lawsuit - and learning through it that complaints about Springer had allegedly been ignored by police and school board officials. He was appalled. "I had 19 years of suppressed - I don't even know what you call it - a ball of emotion," says Parent, his voice dropping into a low tone, seething with disbelief, "that just nailed me between the eyes. Somebody actually told them? They knew?"

He strokes his beard. And pulls the invisible hood over his face. "The cops knew, the board of education knew, town councillors knew." His voice is filled with contempt. "I want the people who knew and failed to do anything to know what I went through." He stabs a rigid finger at the table. For a moment the hood is lifted, and his eyes are burning. "They will know my pain."

Bob Cheetham believes Springer abused as many as 100 boys. He thinks different generations of the same families were molested. Thirty-odd children were involved in the police investigation, conducted in 1984 and 1985, he says. Their names, of course, were never released. In a small town, this doesn't make a lot of difference. While they don't know who was abused, people think many of Springer's victims are still close by - they are bound to be neighbours. Bonnie José, 39, looks at a photo taken in 1976 of her Grade 8 class trip. Springer stands in the bottom left corner. She scans the faces in the crowd: "I'm sure someone here was affected." Like many in the community, she was stunned to learn about the extent of the abuse. "I felt sick and shocked and shameful. I didn't really know," she says. The town has, at least, a moral responsibility toward Springer's victims, she says. "This did happen here. Yes, the whole community has a responsibility."

Not all residents are so sympathetic, and already the town is beginning to split over the lawsuits. Last fall, Artie Cooper, a one-time friend and business associate of Springer, received an envelope in the mail, postmarked in town. Cooper, now 54, was in Springer's Grade 8 class and later became a colleague, teaching at the same school. They led many class trips to Toronto together. In the envelope were paragraphs cut from local newspaper reports about the suits. While he had heard rumours about Springer, he "never, ever" saw inappropriate behaviour, he says. He thinks the mailed missive is "a call to come forward as part of the healing process." But he has nothing to offer, he says. "I don't have anything to hide and I don't have anything to come forward with." He has no clue who sent the envelope.

Many resent the spotlight on their town, illuminating a nasty part of its past. The abuse happened long ago, before most of the town's current population had even moved in. The man responsible - Springer - is dead, they say. "Why now and why us?" asks Rose Marie Comeau, 50, who was born in Marathon and taught by Springer. People wonder when it will end, she says. "When can we bury the SOB permanently?"

The broader community was victimized by Springer, along with the boys he abused, says community leader Wendy Bell. "He was very, very good at being a predator. He was very devious, a difficult man to catch." She is sitting on a sofa in her spacious living room, her feet tucked up beside her. Bell, who was Marathon's newly retitled mayor from 1985, shortly after Springer's sudden departure, until 1991, had complained about him in 1982. As a parent-chaperone, she had joined a class trip to Toronto and had been told by a student that Springer had pulled down his trousers. The behaviour was inappropriate, she told the board, and Springer should not be permitted to travel with students. When her complaint was ignored, she wrote a letter and hand-delivered it to the regional director of education. Again, there was no response.

Bell doesn't believe the community knew Springer was a pedophile. But she is appalled that the power of his position allowed him to so gravely breach trust. What is most galling to her, and causes tears to soak her cheeks, is that nothing was done to help the boys he abused. "The victims got nothing," she says. "It's the injustice. It's so sad that anyone would have to go through that - and do it on their own."

Cooper, who was shocked by Springer's arrest, expresses sorrow for the damage his one-time friend did to his victims. Still, he doesn't think much of the lawsuits. "How would you go about proving that the powers of authority knew about it - and did nothing?" he asks. "I think it's ridiculous, especially the money they are going after."

THE LAWSUITS are likely to take years to wend their way through the justice system. The key issue will be: who knew what when - and, most importantly, what did they do with that knowledge? Did they turn a blind eye? Mayo Moran is a law professor at the University of Toronto and has a forthcoming book on legal responsibility. Even if, in the past, the blind-eye approach was accepted as the right thing to do, the courts today are likely to frown on the practice, she says. A school board's responsibility to children, she adds, is more clear-cut than a town's. Parent and Rule will have to show either that the board knew or, with all clues out there, that it should have known and did not act; for instance, that it ignored or failed to follow up on a complaint. "It would be enough," Moran says, "to show that the board should have known."

In addition to Bell's complaints, there was at least one other, earlier incident that Parent's lawyer, Christopher Watkins - who is also acting for Joe Rule - will bring forth. In 1972, Springer was convicted of giving alcohol to minors while on a trip to Thunder Bay for a Scouts event. Subsequently, some parents wrote a letter to the school board, complaining about Springer. In a measure of the power Springer enjoyed, the letter was signed only, "A group of concerned parents." Still, he was dismissed from the Boy Scouts - only to rejoin some years later - and was forced to step down as vice-principal of the school, but allowed to stay on as a teacher.

Both the school board and the town say they will defend themselves. School board officials declined further comment. Pat Richardson, Marathon's mayor, says the matter is in the hands of the town's lawyers. "I don't believe the town is liable," she adds. "It was one man who did this damage. This was a person not sanctioned by the town."

In cases where there is merit, the parties often settle out of court, Moran says. Parent is willing to go all the way with this suit, he says, even though a settlement would be easier. The last thing he'd accept, he stresses, is a deal that prohibits him from speaking about the abuse. "I will not allow them to bury the issue. At the end of the day, they'll have to look me in the eye."

See also SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN.

Maclean's January 20, 2003

Author KATHERINE MACKLEM

The Canadian Encyclopedia © 2009 Historica Foundation of Canada