More inmates step forward with allegations of abuse by former B.C. jail guard
Credit to Author: Lori Culbert| Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2020 13:00:38 +0000
More men who were once incarcerated in B.C.’s notorious Oakalla prison have contacted a Vancouver lawyer in the wake of a series of Postmedia stories about a former jail guard who is accused of sexually abusing 200 former inmates.
After the publication of the stories in late November, approximately 10 more former inmates have contacted lawyer Karim Ramji, who has filed a “representative action” lawsuit — similar to a class action — against now-retired guard Roderic David MacDougall and his former boss, the province of B.C.
The representative action, which still must be approved by a judge, was filed on behalf of 61 men and alleges MacDougall is “one of Canada’s most prolific sexual offenders.” The province and MacDougall have not yet filed statements of defence to the allegations, which remain unproven.
It is too early in the court process to indicate whether any new names will added to the lawsuit, although Ramji noted there is no statute of limitations on sexual offence allegations.
One of the men who contacted Ramji also phoned this newspaper, saying the stories brought back difficult memories and made him want to speak publicly for the first time about what allegedly happened to him while incarcerated in Oakalla between 1980 and 1987.
“We all feel shame and embarrassment. We all come across as tough-guy convicts, but the reality is we were just kids and we were scared and we’d do anything to survive,” Stan Lucier said from Ontario, where he now lives and works.
Stan Lucier.
MacDougall, now 66, worked for B.C. Corrections from 1976 to 1997 in Oakalla, Alouette, the Fraser Regional Correctional Centre and the Surrey Justice Centre probation office.
Today, more than 200 former inmates have filed civil claims in court alleging they were sexually abused by MacDougall over his 21-year career when they were teenagers or young men incarcerated for relatively minor crimes. In responses filed in court, the province has denied MacDougall assaulted anyone, but adds that if a judge finds otherwise, then the province admits indirect liability but insists it had no direct knowledge of any alleged crimes.
MacDougall declined to comment when contacted recently by the newspaper. He has filed very few responses to the civil suits, but in at least one found by Postmedia he denied any wrongdoing. He also maintained his innocence at a 2000 criminal trial at which he was convicted of sexual assault, indecent assault and extortion in relation to five inmates, all of them 17 or 18 years old, in the 1980s.
About half of the 200 civil suits are now completed: Some resulted in payouts totalling, by conservative estimates, at least $500,000 by the provincial government; an undisclosed additional amount of money has been paid out for some private, out-of-court settlements; and a few cases were dismissed because the trial judge found the allegations hadn’t been proven.
The other half of the civil suits are still before the courts.
More than 60 of those complainants are now part of Ramji’s “representative action,” which argues the province was more than a secondary player: that through its own “systemic misconduct,” it failed to respond to the many complaints about its employee and therefore “facilitated the sexual assaults.”
An undated photo of Roderic MacDougall taken before 2005.
Ramji told Postmedia that the lawsuit, if approved, will ask what the province did and didn’t do during MacDougall’s long career and the two decades since. “What did they do to deal with it? Did they make any sort of an internal inquiry? Did they hold a public inquiry? Did they reach out to victims?”
Postmedia asked the attorney general’s ministry when it would file its response to the representative action, but has not received a response.
The court documents allege “the sexual assaults have had devastating emotional and psychological impacts on the victims,” often compounding pre-existing drug and crime problems, and spiralling them into even more difficult lives.
Lucier alleges he was assaulted in the 1980s when a guard took him outside the prison on a temporary pass to see his girlfriend who was about to have a baby. Lucier, whose allegations have not been filed in court and remain unproven, said he was promised perks inside the prison if he agreed to certain sexual acts, and was later sent to segregation when he started to refuse.
While sentencing MacDougall at his 2000 criminal trial, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mary Ellen Boyd found his victims “were all vulnerable boys,” and he had “extensive power” over parole applications or prison transfers, which he offered in exchange for sexual favours or would threaten to make their lives far more difficult if they declined.
Stan Lucier in the 1980s.
Lucier was in and out of prison for most of his adult life, struggling with addiction and other challenges, but has been clean and employed for several years now. If he joins the representative action, he said, it would not be for the money, but to explain part of the past to his estranged daughter (who herself now has a daughter).
“I don’t want a nickel. I want to meet my daughter and my granddaughter who I’ve never met,” Lucier said, who became emotional when describing his tattoo bearing his daughter’s date of birth.
“It’s on my chest — she never left me. And that is the casualty (of the situation) right there. Our families didn’t know what we were up against.”
John Court also contacted Postmedia, saying he was offered a $10,000 settlement by the B.C. government in the late-2000s after filing a suit against the province and MacDougall. Postmedia could not independently confirm this information.
Court, who said he was raised in a physically abusive home, was sent to Oakalla at age 16 in 1982 and stayed until 1986. He estimates he was sexually assaulted up to five times.
Court, who had his struggles but also got married, had four children and had a long career as a heavy equipment tractor trailer operator, hopes that by speaking out it will encourage other victims to ask for help.
“Being in prison is one thing but the abuse has had a huge affect on my life, even today. I am now 54 years old and I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Court, who wonders why more criminal charges were never laid.
The newspaper stories opened old wounds.
“They took the bandages off, cut the stitches open and started the bleeding again,” he said, but he hopes talking about what happened may help him, and others, finally get closure.
Prisoners in Oakalla in 1975.
The stories were unsettling not only for former Oakalla inmates, but also for their loved ones.
Sandra Schultz’ son William Hallgarth was an inmate in Oakalla when he phoned her one night in May 1981 to tell her he was being sexually abused in the jail and did not think he could go on. She immediately tried to alert authorities that she believed he could be a suicide risk, Schultz recalled recently, but hours after that phone call, her son died by suicide in his cell. He was 17.
Schultz’ son did not tell her the name of his alleged abuser inside Oakalla, she said. But she was disturbed to learn recently about the sex assaults happening in the jail around that time. Until she read about MacDougall in The Vancouver Sun in November, she had no idea that a former Oakalla guard had been convicted in 2000 of sexually abusing inmates around the time her son died. After reading the stories, Schultz, who lives in Nanaimo, reached out to both Ramji’s office and the newspaper.
Hallgarth had a “deplorable upbringing characterized by a possessive, irresponsible drunken father,” according to a pretrial probation officer’s report quoted in a Nanaimo Daily News story after his 1981 death, describing the teenager as “emotionally and mentally well below his age.”
“My Billy was a good kid,” Schultz told Postmedia. “He lived with us for three years before this all came down, and we were teaching him to read and write.”
The probation officer noted that Schultz was a good influence on Hallgarth’s young life, the Daily News reported in 1981. Hallgarth had mostly been raised by his alcoholic father, the Daily News reported, after Schultz had “given him up under fear of physical assaults from his father.”
“Despite everything, however, the (probation officer’s) report said that Hallgarth was a ‘rather nice, quiet young man,’ ‘generous,’ and ‘kind to animals,’” the report said. “Unfortunately it is impossible to predict what effect any type of sentence will have.”
It was painful to read in November about the abuse at Oakalla in the 1980s, Schultz said, “but I’m glad I did.”
Even though it’s decades in the past, people should know about what happened in Oakalla and other B.C. jails, Schultz said, “because it’s (almost) like somebody got away with murder.”
Nov 23: A jail guard, the government and 200 inmates
Nov 25: A failure to improve oversight
Nov 26: Life sentences of shame and fear
Nov 27: A long road through the courts
Twitter: @loriculbert