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John Hudak
John Hudak contacted injusticebusters
to correct several factual errors I made in this report.
1) I did not work in
Rocky Mountain House for most of my 24 year career in the RCMP.
I in fact worked at numerous detachments and sections in
the three western provinces. Rocky Mountain House was one of
the two postings I had while stationed in Alberta during my career.
2) At the time of JOHNSON's initial complaint against myself
for being "rude" to her, there had only been
one other false complaint filed by JOHNSON against another RCMP
member at Rocky Mtn. House.
3) Yes, I was placed under surveillance and it happened that
some people I came in contact with also became subject of those
survellance notes however they were not actively targeted for
further surveillance.
4) I retired from the RCMP on January 6th of 2005
but infact worked my last day at the detachment in Trail, B.C.
on Oct. 9th, 2004 using unpaid overtime and annual leave
credits.
5) The false charges and the manner inwhich the RCMP handled
that investigation, the subsequent Mildred JOHNSON investigation
and a lack of acceptance of responsibility for this botched
investigation have eroded my faith in the system.
It is through this continuance of injustice that I chose to leave
the RCMP as I no longer felt I could sing the company song.
In closing I did read the two
comments posted by other bloggers with respect to my story.
I am particularly disturbed by the comments of the "anonymous
RCMP member" with respect to so called past similar
complaints and the fact I am a "woman abuser".
Those comment have absolutely no merit and I challenge him or
her to come forward with the fact and prove what he or she has
said and not continue to make false malicious accusations.
This person should have the guts to also identify
themself and not hide behind a cloak of secrecy when making such
derogatory comments.
Although these factual errors
do not affect the general story, we are happy to point them out
and apologize to anyone who may have been misled. We strive for
accuracy and welcome corrections. We also welcome constructive
contributions to the Blog
. It is disappointing when people choose to make false statements.
At the same time it reminds us that much education remains
to be done. -Steele, June 11, 2005
His own colleagues helped
set him up
In a report on CBC's The National,
November 23, 2004, former RCMP Constable John Hudak told his
story. He was well thought of in the community of Rocky Mountain
House, Alberta, where he worked most of his 24 year career.
A woman in the community, Mildred
Johnson, stalked him and through an eleborate set-up of taped
telephone messages succeeded in having him charged with raping
him. She was a nurse at the hospital. Before charging him with
rape, she told his superior officers that he had come to the
hospital stoned on cocaine.
She claimed she could spot
this because of previous experience working in the U.S.
It apparently started when
a waitress in a coffee shop where Hudak was having coffee asked
him if he would be interested in dating her friend, Mildred Johnson.
Hudak politely said no, thank you. He had met her when she was
a witness in a murder trial. He received several telephone calls
with no one on the other end which were later found to have cme
frm her. She filed a complaint with the Rocky Mountain House
detachment that he had been rude to her.
Hudak's superiors at Rocky
Mountain House did not take Johnson's complaints seriously. "They
just didn't fit," said Sgt. Larry Russell. Johnson had previously
filed complaints against three other officers, all of which had
been shown to have no merit.
Johnson filed her complaints
with the RCMP in Red Deer. Investigators went off to Rocky Mountain
House where they interrogated Hudak with the accusatory methods
they have developed for extracting confessions from citizens.
They had placed Hudak and his
friends under surveillance and tapped his phone. They took a
DNA sample. They refused to listen to Hudak's co-workers and
superiors who spoke to his good character and they also ignored
warnings from people in the community that she was not to be
trusted and anything she said should be carefully scrutinized.
Within the attachment several of his mates were watching him
carefully, looking for evidence of Johnson's claim that he had
gone to her house, raped her and threatened to kill her if she
told anyone.
Hudak was charged.
He heard about his charges
and suspension on the radio.
He hired a private investigator
to go over the evidence against him.
Johnson had given the police
DNA samples, claiming they were from a couch where Hudak had
raped her. When tested, the samples did not match. Johnston claimed
she had had the couch cover cleaned and that the dry-cleaning
fluid would have altered the DNA. The investigator determined
that she had not had the cleaning done as she had claimed and
had gone so far as to produce a forged receipt from a drycleaners
to back up her lie.
The prosecutor went ahead with
a trial despite the Hudak's DNA sample having been tested and
shown his innocence, knowing all of the above and having received
information from Johnson's relatives that she was lying. Because
Hudak had thoroughly prepared his defence, Johnson was caught
in the lie and the prosecutor's case fell apart.
Hudak was acquitted but his
career was destroyed. He transferred to Calgary. Women working
in the office learned about his previous charges and expressed
concern about working in the same office with an alleged rapist.
On October 9, 2003, John left the RCMP.
The charges, sexual assault
and uttering death threats, are the sort of charges that do not
easily go away, even when a person is exonerated by a court.
His reputation had become so
tarnished that he could no longer be an effective policeman in
the community.
He eventually transferred back
to Trail, B.C. where he had begun his career. The tarnish on
his reputation followed him there. He retired and has filed a
$3M lawsuit.
Mildred Johnson was charged
with perjury and received a six month sentence.
Grant Gelinas who did the story
for CBC was interviewed on The
Current. Scrolldown to part 2. An audio version of the documentary
can be heard.
Sgt Larry Russll was Hudak's
superior. He is interviewed as well.
This story shows how easily
hard-working policeman who follow the law and their own rules
can become embittered by those who have tunnel vision and join
together with unscrupulous crown prosecutors who sensationalize
stories and use the media to pursue innocent people.
That they even do it to their
own must be hard for them to absorb.
According to the CBC piece,
Hudak has filed a $3M lawsuit against the police.
The prosecutors in this case
were clearly malicious. That they would try and convict John
Hudak, even after being told by her own relatives that Mildred
Johnson was a trouble maker and a liar, is hard to understand.
We wish John Hudak well in
his civil claim and hope that the RCMP will be forced to clean
up their act and that the prosecutors will be fired.
- Hell hath no fury?
- Constable Hudak's ordeal
The Report, March 18, 2002
pp. 19, 20
Without a shred of evidence,
a nurse cries rape and puts a Mountie through two years of torture
By Marnie Ko
[Photo; Caption: Officer Hudak:
Not one trace of DNA was found at his accuser's home.]
John Hudak, 49, a 21-year veteran
Alberta RCMP officer, suspects his life will never be the same.
In August 2000, the constable
was charged with sexual assault and uttering threats against
a then 58-year-old nurse (who for legal reasons cannot be named).
He barely knew the woman, and
spoke to her only briefly and professionally the handful of times
he attended at the small Rocky Mountain House hospital where
she worked.
But in May 2000, she alleged
Constable Hudak had raped her three months earlier.
She said he sowed up at her
home February 8 while she was sleeping on the couch in a skimpy
nightshirt.
She said he came in. pushed
her down on the sofa and raped her for 45 minutes. She claimed
she waited three months to report the rape because he threatened
to make her "disappear."
Const. Hudak told investigators
he "didn't even know where" the nurse lived. But charges
were laid in November 200, and he was suspended from the force,
with pay. Even though he passed numerous polygraphs, the charges
went ahead. Finally, on February 13, the officer'' long ordeal
came to an end. Red Deer Court of Queen's Bench Justice Jack
Holmes deliberated less than an hour before acquitting the Moutie
on all charges.
Mr. Justice Holmes said the
nurse's testimony was tainted. For example, she forged a receipt
from a carpet-cleaning copany to explain why investigators could
not find any DNA belonging to Const. Hudak at her trailer home.
(She told police that she hired
the company to steam clean her couch after the rape. But company
officials testified they do not clean upholstery, were closed
on the day of the alleged rape, do not issue receipts that match
the one the nurse provided and had no record of ever attending
the nurse's home.)
The judge added he did not
believe the nurse was afraid of the officer, because she lodged
two complaints against him after the rape was alleged to have
occurred. The nurse had a history of complaining about other
RCMP officers, and described what she alleged was a 45 minute
sexual assault in only a few minutes while testifying, noted
the judge.
Justice Holmes said there was
"little reason to doubt the testimony of Const. Hudak."
He suggested the trial proceeded at all only because the RCMP
was trying to avoid public perception that police officers were
receiving preferential treatment from the justice system.
Const. Hudak, divorced with
two adult children, first met the short, overweight nurse at
the hospital while investigating a murder in 1999. For the next
six months he received silent phone calls to his home, which
he ignored. After the nurse lodged an initial complaint against
him in March 2000, he realized she was responsible for the phone
calls.
In the March complaint, the
nurse claimed Const. Hudak "glared" at her while ate
the hospital, and, on another occasions, was "cocky, strutting,
agitated." Later she phoned RCMP headquarters in Edmonton
and alleged Const, Hudak had "done some cocaine." The
matter was sent to his superior officer, and an informal resolution
meeting was held among Sergeant Larry Russell, Const. Hudak and
the nurse.
The nurse signed the complaint
off as unfounded after Sgt. Russell suggested it was "malicious."
She would later lodge a complaint against Sgt. Russell, alleging
he was "rude and intimidating." But despite attending
the meeting and talking to various victim-service employees and
an RCMP complaint-line official over the course of the next three
months, the nurse had still not complained she was raped.
She also claimed to have no
interest in Const. Hudak, but had a waitress friend ask the officer,
in front of his RCMP partner, if he was single. The waitress
told Const. Hudak she was asking on behalf of her friend, the
nurse.
Meanwhile the silent calls
continued, and Const. Hudak lodged a complaint against the nurse
for harassment. It was after officers visited the nurse and warned
her to stop phoning Const. Hudak that she phoned an RCMP complaint
and alleged she was raped.
The constable received more
phone calls to his home from the nurse in the summer of 2000.
They were being taped by the RCMP. The Report obtained transcripts.
The nurse phoned half a dozen
times over two days.
On June 14, 2000, she finally
reached Const. Hudak. He told her he had no interest in talking
to her. "Maybe I guess I'm gonna have to bring some, this
business to the attention of the authorities," she told
him.
He replied, "OK,"
and told her to make a complaint if she wished. Finally the nurse
said, "Why did you come to my house in February and, and
do what you did?" Const.
Hudak replied, I don't know
what you are talking about.you go ahead and pursue your complaint.
OK?" and hung up.
The next day, she phoned five
more times, and on the fifth try, Const. Hudak answered the phone.
The nurse said, "You listen to me.I want to know how it
was that you came to my house and, and raped me like you did.why
did you do that?" Const. Hudak replied, "OK, [nurse],
you go ahead with your complaint. OK? Goodbye."
Const. Hudak provided a DNA
sample for court. Not one drop of his DNA was found at the home
of the nurse. The nurse claimed she threw out her ripped nightgown
and was never examined by a doctor. She was never tested for
sexually transmitted diseases.
Following his acquittal, Const.
Hudak left on a cruise to the south Carribean. When he returns,
he will be transeferred to duties with the G8 Summit.
But what led the nurse to level
such a bizarre accusation towards an officer who was well-respected,
active in the Catholic Church and belonged to the Knights of
Columbus? The nurse had a run-in with Texas police in 1989, after
repeatedly making threatening phone calls to her ex-boyfriend's
new girlfriend. The nurse phoned the girlfriend and threatened
to kill her and throw sulphuric acid in the face of the girlfriend's
daughter. Police had seven tapes of the nurse's threats. She
was placed on community supervision and fined $200.
Const. Hudak had his own reaction.
During his trial, crown prosecutor Ian Fraser asked him, "Why
didn't you say to her [the nurse], 'you're nuts?" Const.
Hudak replied, "I had already come to the conclusion this
woman was nuts."
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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
