-
- Michael
Jackson | Michael
Cardamone | Judge LaFerme
| Ron Jesterhoudt | Paul
Shanley | Mikai |
-
Doug Brown
I held back on making any
comment on this case just as I held off on linking it to other
pages. Nothing positive was being said about Doug Brown. Except
for the comment Avi Lewis made to an author that Brown had "saved
his life." I respect Lewis and I have no doubt that had
he been molested he would have come forward. I think he was out
of the country at the time of the trial.
I have since subscribed
to Court TV and have been watching, with some horror, the trial
of Michael Jackson. I also followed online the trial of Michael
Cardamone. And I have never been one to get all goofy over recovered
memories.
One problem is that when
we get into the realm of the weird and/or unspeakable, the current
trend of prejudice seeps its way into the core of social consciousness,
even into the minds of the weird and unspeakable who are afraid
even to associate with each other. So I gave a great deal of
thought before I placed any links at the top of this page. We
already have enough prejudice going around -- why compound it
all with guilt by association?
Doug Brown should have finished
his sentence by now. He has been branded a pariah. I trust he
has some friends, but not friends with enough courage to stand
up for him. Or maybe they tried and were rebuffed.
Reading between the lines
I gather that Doug Brown is argumentative. Difficult. I have
also heard these words used to describe me. I have tried to temper
my opinionated ways and actually, the internet is a good outlet
for me. Writing forces one to be more circumspect. I think, however,
I have been too circumspect regarding Doug Brown. I hope he will
bring his new experience online and, together with his teaching
skills which UCC chose to discard, become a force for change
in the justice system.
-- Sheila Steele, March 20, 2001
-
Ontario private school
teacher found guilty of abusing boys
CBC News, Oct 8, 2004
TORONTO - Doug Brown, a former
teacher at a prestigious private school in Ontario, has been
found guilty on nine charges of indecent assault on young boys
at the school.
In delivering his verdict Friday,
Ontario Superior Court Justice Harry LaForme said he believes
the hazy memories of all seven former UCC students over Brown's
denials.
Douglas Brown leaves court Friday in Toronto.
The judge told the court he
found Brown's accounts of late night visits to the dormitory
in the 1970s "fraught with serious credibility problems."
"His evidence is self-serving
it was evasive and at times argumentative," Laforme
said, "and on the whole lacked the ring of truth."
Brown, 55, had pleaded not
guilty on 12 charges stemming from accusations that he abused
seven young boys in the school dorm rooms.
The school issued an statement
following the verdict.
"We are also sorry that
this happened at UCC. As a community of educators, we find this
particularly distressing," said the school in a statement.
The school added that it is
committed to a fair process in determining its responsibility
to compensate Brown's victims.
Brown, who could face 10 years
in prison, is out on bail and will be sentenced in December.
During the trial Laforme heard
very different versions of what happened at the prestigious private
school.
The seven accusers testified
the former English teacher touched them inappropriately.
They said Brown visited them
late at night in their dormitory beds when they were 11-, 12-
and 13-year-old boarding students. For some, that led to depression
and shame.
Brown's lawyer attacked the
credibility of the witnesses and questioned why they took so
long to come forward.
Brown was let go from the school
in 1993 after accusations about inappropriate behaviour.
At the trial, Brown said he
received a year of severance and a letter of reference from the
school and was told not to talk about the scandal.
An Ontario court previously
approved a settlement reached in 2003 between the school and
former students who said Brown sexually touched them.
Copyright ©2005 Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved
Old
memories haunt his case
Lawyers deal with flashbacks, images
JIM COYLE, Toronto Star,
Oct. 7, 2004
Halfway through his closing
argument yesterday, in a hallway outside Superior Court, while
coffee was sipped and heels cooled on a morning recess, defence
lawyer Paul Stunt sighed and said "this is the case from
hell.''
If it was a turn of phrase
grown hackneyed from overuse, it was, under the circumstances,
a lament that could hardly have been more apt.
Both in its facts and the challenges
presented to all concerned, the indecent assault trial of a former
Upper Canada College teacher that ended yesterday was hellish
to be sure.
It alleged the most deplorable
of betrayals, inflicted on the most vulnerable of victims - little
boys, some of them unhappy even being in boarding school, most
frightened at being away from home for the first time, roused
from sleep to be indecently assaulted by the very person charged
with protecting them.
It was a trial based on memories
a quarter-century old. And as such, it left the crown to build
a case against Douglas Ian Brown from flashbacks and images,
from sordid snippets of recall, to build a case on the word of
men who, in some cases, had gone on to live tragic and crime-ridden
lives.
It left Stunt, as a result,
to defend his client, now 55, against allegations without date,
allegations that continued to expand and multiply even to within
days of the trial as memories stirred, against allegations from
a habitual liar and without records that could no longer be found
and the testimony of key players who have since died.
And if, as Stunt maintained
yesterday, the whole story of Doug Brown's nocturnal prowling
around the cubicles of his slumbering young boarders was based
on a series of mistakes, untruths and misinterpretations, well,
the allegations will have made a victim of the accused in a way
so hellish it is difficult to overstate and almost impossible
to reverse.
In his closing argument, however,
Crown Attorney Warren Thompson suggested there is little risk
of that.
``Seven people have come forward
who didn't bear the man any enmity at all,'' Thompson told Mr.
Justice Harry LaForme. And their allegations, he argued, contain
the telling detail of truth.
The feel of a moustache on
their skin. The smell of beer on a man's breath. The motion of
his fondlings. The way little boys went rigid or curled into
the fetal position at his touch. The confusion and upset left
behind.
There was the ring of truth
in how the assaults were anchored in time the way a little boy
would, related to Christmas or a birthday or a trip to the infirmary,
he said.
There was the echo of hurt
and shame in how one man, when pushed to give details 25 years
on, snapped: ``Yeah, I had a f------ erection. What do you want
me to say?''
Thompson said that though some
witnesses are involved in a civil suit against Brown and the
school, most liked their former teacher even after the assaults
and one, who is president of a computer firm and is not involved
in the civil action, had "everything to lose by coming forward
and absolutely nothing to gain.''
Brown was a teacher at UCC
from 1975 to 1993. He pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of indecent
assault and one of gross indecency as a result of incidents that
allegedly occurred between 1975 and 1984 at the prep school.
One after another over two
weeks, seven former students testified that Brown came on one
or more occasions to their cubicles after lights were out or
molested them in his room. Some said he pulled down their pyjama
bottoms and fondled their genitals. Two said he performed oral
sex on them. Several said they smelled alcohol on his breath.
Thompson said controversy arose
around Brown within weeks of his hiring, and that his actions
in response to complaints first in 1975, then again in 1993,
did not resemble those of an innocent man.
In 1975, when a boy complained
of being bothered by Brown and had his father visit the former
principal of UCC (both of those men now dead), Brown made little
effort to clear his name or muster support to his side, Thompson
said.
Then, in 1993, after complaints
were again made against him, Brown walked away from a $67,000-a-year
job without a fight or much effort to demonstrate his innocence,
he said.
Then, Brown spent most of the
seven years before his arrest in 2001 out of the country, never
trying to refute the allegations still floating around, allegations
surely lethal to any future teaching career, Thompson said. Reasonable
people ``would think that would be something he would want to
clear up.''
For his part, Stunt said that
though some of the witnesses had led sad lives, ``we are talking
about a court of criminal justice where the stakes are high and
the level of proof must be very high.''
One witness is a drug addict
with more than 80 criminal convictions and can hardly be considered
reliable, he said. Another willingly accompanied Brown on a canoe
trip after he said the indecent assault on him occurred.
Granted, Stunt told LaForme,
his client's manner of testifying might have been ``quirky, eccentric.
... But I'm asking you to conclude that it is credible.''
Among Brown's eccentricities
were an apartment at the school full of souvenirs from his travels
- a whalebone, an airplane propeller, snowshoes - that must have
fascinated young boys; and a manner - alluding to Monty Python,
sneering at Ronald Reagan, expounding on the nature of China
and properties of beads of mercury - that seemed pedantic in
a courtroom but may well have entranced young minds.
In fact, broadcaster and former
UCC student Avi Lewis told author James Fitzgerald for his 1994
book Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College that
``one of the teachers, Doug Brown, saved my life.''
Two of the obviously damaged
men who testified at his trial made it sound that Doug Brown
helped ruin theirs.
Mr. Justice LaForme will deliver
his verdict tomorrow.
At UCC, troubles politely
ignored
Teacher resigned to `help out,' trial told
JIM COYLE, Oct. 6,
2004
Whatever other lessons the
indecent assault trial of a former Upper Canada College teacher
ends up providing, it has already produced something of a case
study in how not to handle problems.
It seemed clear, as Mr. Justice
Harry LaForme prepared to hear closing arguments today in Superior
Court, that neither the prestigious school nor its former teacher
and housemaster Douglas Brown had much to teach anyone about
facing up to trouble.
Brown has pleaded not guilty
to 11 counts of indecent assault and one of gross indecency as
a result of incidents that allegedly occurred at the school between
1975 and 1984. On Monday, questioned by his own lawyer, Brown
said none of the incidents described by seven former UCC students
during the trial ever happened.
Yesterday, cross-examined by
Crown Attorney Warren Thompson, Brown again professed his innocence
and filled in more of the picture a quarter-century ago at one
of Canada's elite institutions.
Brown talked at length about
the deeply troubled students he said it was his lot to encounter,
describing their emotional upheavals, their outbursts of aggression,
the parents who seemed to have more money than time for their
kids, and his own efforts to help his students.
``I think I spent a lot of
time with (one boy) trying to help him through those times,''
he said of a man who would later testify against him. ``I listened
to his anger against his mother and his sister.''
He described his own rather
unorthodox habits - including the small dormitory apartment where
Brown kept an open-door policy for students, as well as a huge
whalebone from Newfoundland, stones from the Arctic, paddles,
snowshoes, a 2-metre airplane propeller.
Not to mention a little fridge
in which Brown's beer was kept cold - and from which he later
discovered it was apparently pilfered by students - and stacks
of magazines, where amongst the Economists and National Geographics,
he admitted, copies of Playboy could occasionally be found.
In 1975, Brown was 26 and barely
on the job at UCC in his first solid teaching position when trouble
found him.
A former student - one of the
seven who 29 years later would testify against him - said that
on his first night at the boarding school, after earlier being
comforted by Brown about his being upset at being away from home,
he awoke to find the teacher fondling him and later performing
oral sex on him.
Within a couple of days, the
boy and his father showed up at UCC to talk to then-school principal
Dick Howard. Brown said yesterday that no allegation of molestation
was made, only that the boy complained about having been ``bothered''
by something Brown did.
Though the adults wracked their
brains, he said, they really couldn't figure out what the fuss
was about. ``We all stood there and tried to figure out what
he meant,'' he said. ``We all made efforts to find out what he
meant by bothered.''
The best he could figure, Brown
testified, was that the boy - who he said was even then deeply
troubled and who Brown suspects might suffer from fetal alcohol
syndrome - was miffed that he had told him to stop sleeping in
his clothes and change into his pyjamas.
Then, all the heads seemed
to go back into the sand. Brown said the principal advised him
merely to refer any further issues with the boy to other teachers
and not to discuss the matter with other staff members.
So Brown didn't. ``I took the
advice, I took the direction.'' And so began a pattern of what
seemed, by his own account yesterday, a strikingly passive response
to potentially career-destroying developments.
When a former student came
to UCC in the early 1990s with more allegations and a demand
``for virtually my head,'' Brown, even though he insisted the
alleged incidents ``did not happen,'' said he didn't contact
any other teachers to rally them to his defence or to attest
to his innocence.
Instead, he decided to do both
the boy and the school a favour and resign from his $67,000-a-year
job, he told the court.
``I helped (the complainant)
out. I helped the school out, yes.''
You decided to ``take one for
the Gipper?'' asked a startled Thompson.
He wouldn't use that vernacular,
Brown retorted, because it would ``remind me of Ronald Reagan.''
Brown said he'd been thinking
about resigning anyway. He'd taught 18 years without missing
a day. ``I think it was pretty well known among my friends''
that he was considering leaving, Brown said.
When he left, he received a
letter of reference from the school. A notice was also posted
internally saying he had served UCC with distinction - notwithstanding
the old complaints about unspecified bother and the new demand
for his head with which he had quietly complied - and that he
would be missed by students and faculty.
Brown took consulting and teaching
contracts in the Bahamas, the Maldives Islands and China, he
said, but never worked again with young children. It was time
to build a portfolio for curriculum design and development, he
decided, and to teach older students.
``There are other places in
the world to go,'' he said.
And teaching kids is ``a young
man's game.''
Though, as both he and the
school would come to learn, averting one's gaze from problems
does not make them disappear.
Recalling days and nights
at UCC
JIM COYLE, Oct. 5,
2004
To those hiring teachers at
Upper Canada College for the 1975 school year, Douglas Brown
must have seemed a good catch.
With a BA in English and a
master's degree in Canadian literature and history, he was obviously
cerebral. As a canoeist and wilderness guide, he was physically
rigorous. Coming up on his 27th birthday, he was young and, by
all accounts, hip - a bridge, perhaps, across a generation gap
at the time grown rather wide.
But if any new job takes a
bit of getting used to, it could be that teaching at one of the
country's tonier prep schools takes more getting used to than
most.
In addition to teaching, Brown
was a housemaster who boarded at the school. He was responsible
for waking student boarders, for taking roll call, for shepherding
them to breakfast, for ensuring they ate, for getting them to
class on time, then, when classes were done, for getting them
to dinner.
One night a week, he was responsible
for overseeing bedtime and curfew and lights out. Frankly, it
seems to have been as much nanny-work as teaching.
Not only that, the little charmers
being groomed as future Canadian leaders were given to bullying
and hazing rituals that left the new teacher ``a little taken
aback,'' Brown told a Superior Court judge yesterday.
When not mounting nocturnal
raids on the kitchen, the older boys from the second floor were
fond of raiding the younger ones on the third, he said. One of
the tactics of choice was to ``eight-ball people'' - a billiard
ball inserted in a sock and swung to wallop foes.
But even students somewhat
the worse for wear after these festivities tended not to complain
about it, Brown said. Telling, evidently, wasn't the done thing.
The key to keeping mayhem to
a minimum, Brown said, was vigilance and monitoring, ``to let
them know that you were there.''
It is precisely that - the
startlingly contradictory accounts of where Brown was and what
he was doing during those years - with which Mr. Justice Harry
LaForme must wrestle.
Brown, a teacher at UCC until
1993, has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of indecent assault
and one count of gross indecency. For the last two weeks, seven
former UCC students have taken the stand and testified that,
back when they were 11 or 12 or 13 years old, before they'd hit
puberty and before most had a clue what was happening, Brown
came prowling their cubicles after lights were out.
Some said he pulled their pyjamas
down and fondled them. Two said he performed oral sex on them.
A few said he smelled of alcohol during the assaults.
Yesterday, Brown took the stand.
As defence lawyer Paul Stunt reviewed one set of allegations
after another, he concluded with a question.
``Did it ever happen?'' Stunt
asked after reviewing the allegations of the first man to testify.
``No, sir,'' Brown replied.
``That ever happen?'' he asked
after reviewing the account of Witness 2.
``No, sir.''
And on it went, through the
stories of seven men.
That happen? Stunt asked, after
describing an alleged fondling and stroking one night after lights
out.
``No.''
Ever summon a student to your
room?
``Never.''
Ever give them alcohol?
``Never, ever.''
When the allegations were of
his having forced oral sex on the boys, Brown was most vehement
of all.
``Absolutely not.''
Brown said he never entered
any boarder's cubicle except in the performance of his duties.
He denied any sexual impropriety at all. Of the worst of the
allegations, Brown said they came from a troubled boy who he
thought showed all the signs of having fetal alcohol syndrome.
He did, however, admit to actions
that were even then probably less than advisable for a teacher
of young boys.
In 1980, Brown took one former
student on a camping trip to Northern Ontario, he said. ``I thought
it was very friendly.'' Once, he had a student too drunk to drive
sleep it off for a while in his room. ``I think we had a chat
and that was about it.''
And there was the time when,
sitting in ambush for some students engaged in a noisy ``rumble,''
Brown entered a boy's cubicle after lights out and sat on the
end of his bed.
When the boy awoke, he said
``Get away!'' Brown told the court.
``What did you do?'' his lawyer
asked.
``Got away.''
In 1993, Brown was visited
at his apartment by UCC's headmaster at the time and the father
of a boy who first complained about alleged sexual improprieties.
Later that year, Brown resigned, receiving a letter of reference
from the school.
Then he began bouncing around.
In 1994, he had a contract to develop curriculum in the Bahamas.
He did a tour in the Maldives Islands. There were some teaching
contracts in China. Between times, back in Canada, there was
his research on Louis Riel.
In 1997, Brown received a telephone
call from police asking about his UCC years. In August 2001,
he was arrested. Since then, his life has been affected ``to
an unimaginable extent,'' he said yesterday.
He has not worked. He lives
with his 84-year-old mother. He checks into a police station
once a week. He is, he said, ``just trying to live day to day.''
- The trial resumes today.
-
-
- Ex-teacher denies molesting
boys
Takes stand in his own defence
7 former students accuse him
HAROLD LEVY, STAFF REPORTER,
Oct. 5, 2004
Former Upper Canada College
teacher Douglas Brown has flatly denied all the allegations of
seven students who testified he molested them at the college
between 1975 and 1984.
Brown took the witness box
yesterday in his own defence on 11 counts of indecent assault
and one count of gross indecency at his Superior Court trial.
He denied each allegation -
including accusations that he gave some of the students beer,
alcohol and hashish - as they were systematically put to him
by defence lawyer Paul Stunt in front of Judge Harry LaForme.
Most commonly Brown would reply
"never," "never, ever, "No, sir," "I
have no recollection of that," or "absolutely not"
as specific allegations were put to him. Former students have
said he masturbated them, fondled their genitals and, in some
cases, performed oral sex on them.
He testified that all of his
contacts with the seven complainants - most of whom were around
10 to 12 years old at the time - were consistent with his duties
as housemaster, which included patrolling the dormitories after
lights out.
Stunt singled out the evidence
given by a former student who testified that he complained to
Dick Howard, then school principal, that Brown had sexually assaulted
him two days earlier. The witness said the incident happened
in the fall of 1975, on his first night boarding at the Toronto
private school.
The former student, now 41,
is a self-described cocaine addict with a lengthy criminal record.
He had testified that he awoke to find Brown sitting on his bed
and masturbating him. He said Brown also performed oral sex on
him.
But Brown denied every having
been summoned to Howard's office for a meeting, which was attended
by the boy and his father as the former student had testified.
He also denied that Howard
had ever confronted him with allegations of sexual impropriety.
Brown said the only time he
had spoken directly to the father was about two or three weeks
after the start of term, when Howard and the father showed up
at the door of his apartment at the school, for a brief discussion
in the hallway.
He said the boy's father appeared
"quite calm."
Both Howard and the father
are dead. Brown remained at the school until 1993, when, according
to his testimony, he left UCC with a letter of reference.
The student had testified that
Brown initially sat quietly on his bed before leaving the dormitory,
then returning and inflicting the alleged sexual assaults.
Brown acknowledged sitting
on the student's bed one evening but said he had positioned himself
to monitor the movement of some of the other boarders participating
in "a rumble" on another floor.
He explained that housemasters
occasionally had to deal with raids in which some students indulged
in "out-and-out violence" in the dorms.
The raids occasionally involved
a practice known as eight-balling, in which smaller students
on another floor are "whopped" with an eight-ball wrapped
in a sock.
Brown said he was pretty sure
the smaller kids were injured, but they didn't complain because,
"they had a stiff upper lip."
Brown described this particular
complainant as "a troubled boy."
He said he was "out of
place," acted violently toward other students, didn't want
to board at the school because his parents lived in Toronto,
and "couldn't cope very well with life" at the UCC.
"After I watched his behaviour
(I) became concerned that there was something deeply troubling
this boy," Brown said. He noted that around that time, "there
had been lots of discussion about fetal alcohol syndrome,"
and that the student appeared to have some of the symptoms.
Court has heard that UCC entered
into a settlement with this former student in 1993.
Brown, who pleaded not guilty
to all of the counts, stressed that he has never admitted any
"liability or culpability" in relation to the allegations
made by the students.
He said he has been unable
to work since he was arrested and placed on rigid bail reporting
conditions after his arrest in August 2001.
"This has affected me
to an unimaginable extent," Brown told LaForme.
"No one can possibly perceive
the effect that this has had (on me)."
The trial took an unexpected
turn after Brown completed his testimony.
Stunt complained to the judge
that prosecutor Warren Thompson had just presented him with new
disclosure of information relating to "an ongoing investigation"
of Brown.
There was no indication that
the new disclosure related to allegations that were not before
the court.
LaForme delayed Thompson's
cross-examination of Brown until this morning to give Stunt an
opportunity to consider his options in light of the last-minute
disclosure.
- Former UCC
student cross-examined
Ex-UCC teacher faces charges
Complainant's court record cited
HAROLD LEVY, STAFF REPORTER,
Sep. 30, 2004
A former Upper Canada College
student insisted yesterday he had complained to the principal
in 1975 that a teacher had sexually assaulted him on his first
night boarding at the Toronto private school.
The student had testified that
he awoke to find Douglas Brown sitting on his bed and masturbating
him, and that Brown then performed oral sex on him.
Brown was a housemaster and
English teacher at UCC between 1975 and 1993. He is on trial
on 11 counts of indecent assault and one count of gross indecency
in connection with allegations stemming from the mid-'70s to
1984.
Brown's lawyer, Paul Stunt,
cross-examined the former student yesterday about a meeting held
in principal Dick Howard's office, at which the boy's father
was present. Stunt asked the former student to agree that during
the meeting, held two days after the incident, he had not mentioned
any oral sex.
"I don't remember,"
the former student, now 41, replied.
"I don't know why I wouldn't
have."
When it was suggested that
he had used the word "bothered" at the meeting, as
opposed to specific references to sexual misconduct, the student
replied that at age 12 he would not have known how else to describe
sexual abuse.
Asked if he would agree that,
contrary to his testimony, Brown did not enter Howard's office
while the student and his father sat in the waiting room, the
man replied, "You will have a hard time convincing me that
it didn't happen."
No other witnesses are available
to testify about what was said at the meeting because both the
principal and the student's father have died.
The former student rejected
Stunt's charge that sometime after 1993, he had showed up at
3 a.m. at then acting headmaster Douglas Blakey's residence at
the school and "demanded" money.
The former student, an admitted
cocaine addict, had testified he went to Blakey's home around
3 a.m. on two occasions while "intoxicated" on drugs
to ask for money.
He said Blakey went to a money
machine for him on one occasion and gave him money on the other.
Yesterday, he told Mr. Justice
Harry LaForme of the Superior Court who is trying the case without
a jury, that rather than agreeing to the word "demand,"
in connection with his early-morning visit to Blakey's residence,
"I would say `asked.'"
Stunt spent much of his cross-examination
attempting to discredit the former student by taking him through
a criminal record that dates back to 1981, when he was 18 years
old.
"You've got more court
time than Michael Jordan," Stunt charged.
- Seven former students have
finished testifying for the prosecution. Brown may be asked as
early as this morning whether he intends to call a defence.
-
-
- UCC told of sex assault,
man says
Headmaster in '75 took no action
Student's father didn't believe him
HAROLD LEVY, STAFF REPORTER,
Sep. 29, 2004
A former Upper Canada College
student says he complained to the private school's principal
in 1975 that a teacher had sexually assaulted him, but the principal
took no action.
And, two days after the alleged
assault, his father cautioned him to be careful about what he
said about people, the student told the trial of former teacher
Douglas Brown yesterday.
Brown, a housemaster and English
teacher at UCC between 1975 and 1993, is on trial on 11 counts
of indecent assault and one count of gross indecency.
The allegations, made by seven
former students, span the mid-1970s to 1984.
The student, now 41, is an
admitted cocaine addict with a lengthy criminal record who supports
himself through a disability pension and "petty crime."
He testified yesterday that,
in the fall of 1975, during the evening of the first day of school,
Brown escorted him back to his dormitory after he became homesick
and began weeping during a sing-a-long with other boarders.
The witness told Mr. Justice
Harry LaForme that after he got into bed, Brown calmed him down,
and then left.
But he later woke up to find
his pyjamas lowered, his genitals exposed, and Brown, sitting
on his bed masturbating him and later performing oral sex on
him.
"It was all new to me
and I didn't really have a grasp on what was going on,"
the witness said.
He said he felt an "overwhelming"
desire to urinate during the incident.
But when he walked toward the
washroom after Brown left, he saw Brown standing in a doorway,
with his arm blocking the way.
Brown asked him what he was
doing.
"I thought quickly that
I shouldn't say anything about what happened ... so I said I
had a bad dream," he testified. The next morning, he said,
he asked to be admitted to the school infirmary because he was
"freaked out."
There, he managed to phone
his father, told him about the incident and asked him to come
right over.
The student said he described
what happened at a meeting arranged for his father with then
Headmaster Dick Howard.
After the student was sent
back into the waiting room, he saw Brown go into Howard's office.
Some time later, his father
went back into Howard's office, came out to the car where the
student had been told to wait and told him something that would
have a powerful impact on his life.
"He said, `Son, you need
to be careful about what you say about people.'
"The response was not
what I was looking for. I was devastated. I was alone. I didn't
know what to do, who to turn to," he told LaForme. "I
was actually petrified that it would happen again."
However, the student said there
were no other incidents and Brown never became his teacher at
UCC.
"The problem was the looks
I would get in the hallway," he said.
Court heard that the former
student reached a settlement with the college - but not with
Brown - in 1993.
Teacher's late-night
visits recalled
Describes being molested in bed
Ex-housemaster denies assaults
HAROLD LEVY, STAFF REPORTER,
Sep. 28, 2004
A former Upper Canada College
student has described two incidents in which he said a former
UCC housemaster and teacher molested him in his dormitory cubicle.
The witness, who cannot be
identified, testified yesterday that the first time Douglas Brown
came into his cubicle, sometime in 1975, Brown just sat there
quietly before leaving.
But the second time, a few
months later, the witness said he woke to find Brown sitting
much closer to him and reaching under the covers to fondle his
penis and masturbate him.
The witness said Brown did
that on another occasion as well.
That time, " I remember
telling him to `go away' in a loud whisper and I think that he
did."
Brown is on trial on 11 charges
of indecent assault and one count of gross indecency that allegedly
occurred on UCC students in the 1970s and 1980s. He has pleaded
not guilty.
The witness, now about 42,
said that some time after these incidents, in the period between
getting undressed and lights out, he went to Brown's apartment
at the school, which was just down the hall.
"What I remember is that
I was in my dressing gown," the witness testified. "He
said he wanted to examine me.
"He put his hands in my
pyjamas and he examined my genitals."
The witness, who said he could
not remember why he had gone to Brown's apartment on that occasion,
said he told another student that something had happened between
him and Brown, "and we (the witness and the other student)
had an agreement to not be in Mr. Brown's apartment on our own."
In cross-examination, Brown's
lawyer, Paul Stunt, pressed the witness about why his recollection
of the incidents only began in 1992, after having lunch with
another former student who made allegations against Brown.
Stunt also questioned why other
boarders in the dormitory would not have heard his protest on
the third occasion.The student was the fifth of seven students
expected to testify against Brown.
Also yesterday, a witness testified
that Brown gave him hashish and liquor, and said that despite
an incident in 1980 where Brown "grabbed" his penis,
a year later he spent two or three days alone with Brown on a
canoe trip in Northern Ontario.
This witness explained that
Brown's respect for his students and mentorship had "struck
a chord with me."
Also yesterday, Superior Court
Judge Harry LaForme told prosecutor Warren Thompson that he found
the crown's questions as to whether the victims had erections
during the alleged assaults to be irrelevant.
Man recalls life as Boy
Number 4
JIM COYLE, Sep. 23,
2004
He's coming up on 37 now. His
eyes are nestled in darkened pouches and he looks a total stranger
to a good night's sleep. He takes three different medications
for anxiety, depression and mood swings. He's been diagnosed
with post-traumatic stress disorder. He hasn't worked in a dozen
years. He uses marijuana almost every day.
He remembers things.
He remembers the puppy he got
for his birthday in December, 1979. He seems to recall that his
family went to Collingwood to ski that Christmas.
And he remembers, he says,
the night a few weeks after school resumed in January and the
feel of the moustache on his skin when the boarding-school teacher
came again to his room after lights-out and performed oral sex
on him.
He was 12 then.
Even yesterday, a quarter century
on, he didn't want to talk details, cursing in Ontario's Superior
Court of Justice when pushed to relive the long-ago.
Did he have an erection? a
lawyer asked. Did he ejaculate? How far were his pyjamas pulled
down?
But talk the man did - if at
times too quickly for the court reporter, at times too quickly
for Mr. Justice Harry LaForme, talking as if he couldn't get
it over with fast enough.
The man was the fourth of seven
former Upper Canada College students expected to testify at the
trial of Douglas Brown, a former housemaster and English teacher
who has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of indecent assault and
one count of gross indecency.
There is a publication ban
on identification of the witnesses. Let's call yesterday's Boy
4.
He had attended Toronto French
School until Grade 5. His parents wanted to move him to UCC.
It was a "jump up in the private-school hierarchy,"
he said. But only a boarder's space was available. They lived
in Toronto, but took it to get their son in the door for Grade
6.
So during the week, though
his home was at Royal York and Bloor, Boy 4 stayed at the school,
sleeping in a windowless, third-floor dormitory cubicle - "they
were a little like cells" - with a bed, a chair, a desk,
a small closet and the night-time horsing around of his classmates.
He didn't like being a boarder.
He would have preferred to stay at home. He wasn't a mama's boy.
"I just didn't want to go to school and sleep over."
There were housemasters in
the dorm, teachers who "kept an eye on the kids," he
said.
One of these was Mr. Brown,
who Boy 4 said yesterday was a fine teacher and "cool guy,"
a man he felt a boy could go to with a problem.
In Grade 6, Boy 4 didn't have
Brown as a teacher, though "he was around a fair bit"
as housemaster. In Grade 7, he did.
Near the end of September,
maybe the beginning of October that year, sometime between 10
and 11 p.m., after lights were out, Brown pulled back the curtain
and came into his room.
It "wasn't pitch black
in there," Boy 4 said.
He could see the teacher's
glasses and his moustache. He said the teacher sat on the bed,
pulled back the covers and began rubbing first the boy's belly,
then his genitals, through his pyjamas.
He could smell beer on the
man's breath.
Then the man "pulled down
my bottoms," and began fondling "skin to skin."
This lasted five, maybe 10 minutes. The teacher never spoke,
Boy 4 said. And "I didn't say anything to him at all ...
I didn't know what was going on."
He didn't have much sexual
knowledge, he said. He hadn't yet hit puberty. All he knew about
adults coming into his bedroom was when his mum would say goodnight
and "kiss me on the forehead."
He tried to go to sleep. "I
didn't know what else to do." He told no one. "I was
just hoping that would be the last time and everything would
be over with."
"Was it the last time?"
asked Crown Attorney Warren Thompson.
"No, it wasn't,"
Boy 4 said. "It was the first."
In November or early December,
"the same thing happened."
In the new year, there was
another visit, he said. This time, after the fondling, "he
put his mouth to my genitals ... (and) sucked on it.
"I remember the feel of
his moustache. It felt like a long time."
He was too ashamed to tell
anyone, he said. "It really confused the hell out of me."
Afterwards, Boy 4 said he wasn't
able to sleep until very late at night. "I didn't know when
he was going to come in." He persuaded his parents to drop
him back at school Monday mornings instead of Sunday evenings,
so he would have to spend one fewer night a week there. When
the boarding program was scrapped in '81, he was happy. He became
a "day boy."
But by then, it seems, boyhood
was pretty much gone.
He continued at Upper Canada
College until 1983, when he was kicked out for forging tickets
to a school dance at Branksome Hall. When that happened, he went
to Doug Brown to ask for advice, he admitted under cross-examination
by defence attorney Paul Stunt.
"I thought he was a cool
teacher and a cool guy I could talk to."
The next year, Boy 4 returned
to Toronto French School.
A few years ago - back from
Vancouver, where last he held down a job, and long unable to
work due to anxiety and panic attacks - he went to the police
and the media.
"I came to a point in
my life where I felt if I was going to get over any of this stuff
I'd have to press charges."
He said he didn't know, until
he spoke up, that there were others who claim to have been molested
by Brown. When he came forward, they did, too.
Boy 4 was easily able yesterday
to describe the dormitories at Upper Canada College.
He said he doesn't remember
the English mark Doug Brown gave him.
Former UCC students describe
groping
DALE ANNE FREED, STAFF REPORTER,
Sep. 21, 2004
Former Upper Canada College
teacher Douglas Brown groped a student as he lay in his dormitory
bed after the lights were out, a court was told yesterday.
"The experience left me
feeling tremendously alone," said the 42-year-old man, who
was 13, away from home for the first time and in Grade 8 at the
prestigious prep school.
"I was frightened, very
frightened," said the man, whose identity is shielded by
a publication ban. "That's when I knew I was really and
truly alone," he testified, adding that he never told his
parents about the incident - although he recalls telling dorm-mates
"something along the lines that something really strange
happened."
The man was the first to testify
at Brown's trial before Mr. Justice Harry LaForme, without a
jury, at the University Ave. courthouse.
A housemaster and English teacher
at the midtown Toronto school from 1975 to 1993, Brown has pleaded
not guilty to 13 counts of indecent assault, two counts of gross
indecency and one count of unlawful confinement. The allegations
span the mid-1970s to 1984.
Brown "had been drinking.
I could smell the alcohol on his breath," the man testified.
"He moved from my thighs
to my buttocks and then to my genitals," said the witness,
who recalled being dressed in pyjamas at the time. "I knew
it was him. He was almost on top of me," said the man, who
spent six years at the school.
"To be blunt, Mr. Brown
came into my cubicle and molested me," said the man, who
became involved in a civil suit against Upper Canada College
in 2001.
Dressed in jeans and a navy
blazer, the balding and bespectacled Brown, who is out of jail
on strict bail conditions, sat next to his lawyer, Paul Stunt.
A second witness, now 39, testified
he was only 10 when Brown, dressed in running shoes and jeans,
came into his cubicle one night after the fall semester had begun
and started "petting" him from the back of his head
to the small of his back.
Like the first witness, the
second man - who is also involved in the lawsuit against UCC
- recalled being "very, very, very scared." The man
said Brown stroked him about 30 times while he pretended to be
asleep.
The judge ruled yesterday that
four of the charges involving one victim would be severed from
the case and heard at a later date because there were more differences
than similarities with the other cases.
The trial continues today.
- Sex case against ex-UCC
teacher to proceed
Douglas Brown faces 13 counts of indecent assault
COLIN PERKEL, CANADIAN PRESS,
Sep. 17, 2004
A former teacher at Upper Canada
College accused of illegal sex acts against students at the prestigious
private school will have to stand trial on the charges, a judge
ruled today.
Lawyer Paul Stunt had asked
Ontario Superior Court Justice Harry LaForme for a stay of the
charges against former teacher Douglas Brown on the grounds that
it has taken too long for the case to come to trial.
But LaForme disagreed, saying
there's a strong public interest in seeing Brown tried on what
he described as "serious historical assault allegations."
"The offences are very
serious, (but) so is society's demand that Mr. Brown be tried,"
LaForme told the courtroom as he delivered his decision.
"In weighing all the circumstances
. . .the time to bring this matter to trial is not unreasonable."
Brown, who was fired from Upper
Canada College in 1993, faces 13 counts of indecent assault,
two of gross indecency and one of unlawful confinement involving
nine former students.
In earlier arguments, Stunt
had noted his client had been arrested in August 2001 but his
trial only started this week.
He argued that the three-year
delay constituted a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
which guarantees an accused's right to be tried within a reasonable
time frame.
Crown lawyer Warren Thompson
opposed the stay, arguing the delays were reasonable in light
of the complexities of the case and the number of complainants,
some of whom only came forward after the original charges were
laid.
On Wednesday, the balding,
bookish-looking Brown, who is in his mid-50s, pleaded not guilty
to all counts.
Brown taught at the exclusive
boy's school, located in the tony Toronto neighbourhood of Forest
Hill, from 1973 until 1993. He is currently out on bail, subject
to stringent conditions.
The charges related to incidents
that were alleged to have occurred from September 1975 to June
1984 when the complainants were about 12 or 13 years old.
Brown, who lives in Hamilton,
has previously filed an affidavit with the court explaining how
he had been adversely affected by the delays in getting to trial.
Ruling planned on sex
charges against ex-teacher
CANADIAN PRESS, Sep. 16,
2004
A judge plans to rule tomorrow
on whether sex charges against a former teacher at Upper Canada
College should be stayed because of the time it took for the
case to come to trial.
A lawyer for Douglas Brown,
who taught at the exclusive Toronto private school for 20 years
until he was fired in 1993, has already argued in court that
the three-year delay was unreasonable and unfair.
Brown was arrested in August
of 2001 and released on stringent bail conditions.
Lawyer Paul Stunt has argued
before Superior Court Justice Harry LaForme that the delay was
a violation of his client's constitutional rights, an argument
that was refuted by the Crown.
Details of their submissions
cannot be reported because of a court-ordered publication ban.
Dressed in his trademark blue
blazer and jeans, the balding, bookish-looking Brown, who is
in his mid-50s, pleaded not guilty today to 13 counts of indecent
assault, two of gross indecency, and one of unlawful confinement.
The charges all relate to complaints
made by nine former students of the prestigious private boys
school located in the tony Forest Hill area of Toronto.
The alleged incidents are said
to have occurred from September 1975 to June 1984 when the complainants
were about 12 or 13 years old.
Boys' school teacher
seeks stay on sex charges
FROM CANADIAN PRESS, Sep. 15,
2004
The lawyer for a former private-school
teacher charged with a string of sex offences against students
asked a judge today to stay the charges because the case has
taken too long to come to trial.
However, details of the submission
by Paul Stunt, who represents former Upper Canada College teacher
Douglas Brown, cannot be reported as they are subject to a court-ordered
publication ban.
Before making his Charter of
Rights application, Stunt asked for a ban on the publication
of related evidence. The Crown did not oppose Stunt's request
and Superior Court Justice Harry LaForme allowed it.
Stunt later explained he was
simply playing it safe in terms of ensuring the fairness of his
client's trial should the application for a stay be denied.
Earlier in the proceedings,
the balding, bookish-looking Brown, who is in his mid-50s, stood
and pleaded not guilty to each of the 16 counts of three different
charges as they were read aloud in court.
Brown has already requested
a trial by jury, although Stunt hinted in court Wednesday that
his client might change his mind and opt instead for a trial
by judge alone.
Based on allegations from nine
complainants, Brown is accused of 13 counts of indecent assault
on students at UCC, an exclusive boys' school renowned for its
list of graduate luminaries.
He also faces two counts of
gross indecency and one of unlawful confinement.
The charges relate to incidents
that are alleged to have occurred from September 1975 to June
1984 when the complainants were about 12 or 13 years old.
Brown taught at the school,
located in the tony Toronto neighbourhood of Forest Hill, from
1973 until he was fired in 1993.
He was arrested in August of
2001 and released on stringent bail conditions.
The premise of Stunt's application
for a stay is based on the fact it has taken three years for
the case to come to trial, a period of time the lawyer has characterized
as "simply unreasonable."
Brown, who lives in Hamilton,
has previously filed an affidavit with the court explaining how
he's been affected by the delays in getting to trial. Details
of the affidavit are also subject to the ban.
The Crown has said it plans
to oppose Brown's request for a stay.
Stunt has also said would seek
to have certain counts related to one complainant severed from
the others on the basis that they are ``far different."
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
