| “If your not confused, you haven’t been paying attention.” |
| Questions unanswered! |
| Accusations of Police investigation bungling! |
| If there's smoke there must be fire! |
| Police lacked skill and training |
| Possible child molester was a child |
|
By Timothy W. Shire
One night during a Stanley Cup hockey game, Bob Cole and Harry Neil were commenting
about the series of penalties being handed out and one of them remarked, “If your
not confused, you haven’t been paying attention.” Such is how most of us in this
province must feel about the amazing story that revolved around the bedroom community
of Martensville. Essentially we all heard news reports of a day care centre, the
people who worked at and ran it, were involved in a massive sexual child abuse conspiracy.
The crown laid charge after charge then trials began that cost the tax payers of
this province more then any other trial in history. In the end almost all of the
charges were dropped or the accused were acquitted. There were two exceptions, the
son of the people running the day care and a teenage girl both served time in jail.
The news papers, radio stations and television all got right into the story with
feature reporters, interviews and big, often unsettling, stories. After all, the
concept of small children being victims of sexual attacks is very disturbing and
troubling to everyone. As time has moved on, the story fades a bit and yet we are
confused, mostly because we were indeed paying attention and so much of the stories
and the related details did not make rational sense. So many questions remain unanswered
and the whole atmosphere that developed around the series of cases is for the most
part a mystery. Were the children lying, did the bad guys get off on technicalities,
are there still evil child molesters wandering around Saskatoon suburbs who escaped
justice, did the government and police foul up on a massive scale? All good questions.
but there are few reasonable answers to be had. Well that was until this week.
SaskTel grants its Internet customers web space to post their pages but it does so
with some conditions. This past week it booted off a web page created by Richard Klassen
who was pointed a finger directly a members of the Saskatoon police force and accusing
them of complicity in the Martensville event. Now thinking back, we all remember
that one of the accused and acquitted people in the original case was a Saskatoon
policeman, but Klassen was not targeting him. Instead Klassen and others levelled
their accusations at specific members of the investigating team who triggered the
whole series of events in the first place.
When ever individuals are caught in a snare of intense personal drama, there is a
chance they may come off sounded a bit flaky, but Richard Klassen, despite his intense
feelings about this situation makes some interesting points on his two other web
sites which perhaps explains the whole Martensville situation. I would urge you to
look over his web sites for yourself but to save you some time, below is a remarkably
plausible explanation about what happened and how things went into such a twist.
As a trained educational psychologist and long time school administrator, I have
heard children tell some pretty stretched stories, but there is always a form and
fact to the stories that seems to have created the story as it is told. Therefore,
all of us who heard that there were so many charges laid and some of the details
of the stories, felt that there must be a grain of truth in all of it, clearly, that
many kids could not all be fabricating, nor could the investigators have gone that
far off the reality track. That appears to be the core of the Martensville story.
With all that wind behind it there must be something to it, right!
Initially the reports of some abuse were taken to the Martensville police who placed
one of their newest members in charge of looking into the complaint. She immediately
realised that something was up and obtained help. What looks like happened, was that
Saskatoon simply did not have trained people to deal with this sort of thing and
an officer became involved who went about conducting interviews with children using
what he had for skill. That skill was just not up to the task and the investigation
may have went off the rails from day one and as a consequence all that followed was
just contributing confusion.
Richard Klassen contends that there was sexual child abuse, but that the perpetrator
was not one of the accused but was a disturbed child himself. The investigators missed
or disbelieved that he could be involved and proceeded with their interrogations
and the children gave names and situations to get out of the intolerable interview
situation. Once the momentum of the case developed the whole thing steam rolled along,
meanwhile the child perpetrator continued to play a role in the case as a star witness.
With compounding error upon error, the whole news gathering business, the legal profession
and the province’s justice department have some serious mistakes to cover up and
it appears that the establishment closed ranks to make sure that we all would never
know what may, or may not, have happened. The provincial government refused to have
an investigation go forward that would sort out why almost all of its charges evaporated.
The Saskatoon police force appear to have been involved in nailing anyone who suggests
that the blame for the bad conduct of the case was caused by less then competent
police work. The media who earned a lot of money covering the original story can
not afford being identified as a causative factor in propelling forward the frenzy
that revolved around the case. The mystery is what in heavens name is SaskTel getting
involved in this for, what could they possibly have to hide or is the whole establishment
just tightening up a little to defend itself. As you are reading this keep in mind
that the province’s premier and most of his cabinet are in fact, Saskatoon lawyers.
There are a lot of good reasons why the journalists and writers of Saskatchewan have
not polished off an in depth project that puts the wraps on the Martensville story.
Child sexual abuse is gut wrenching stuff and who knows, another situation might
crop up any time and the media can gas up the story and go with it one more time.
But until that happens check out the two existing web sites that have some troubling
information and opinions
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Promenade/7907/index/home.htm
and the more complete
http://www.injusticebusters.com/