Inquisition 21
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A country by country report on the progress of the sex abuse Inquisition
The Saskatoon story
Justice at last!
Note to editors and publishers. We are open to discussions about the possibilities of books or documentaries about this story. New information is emerging. We are in cooperation with Richard Klassen and the team in Injusticebusters. We have also compared the travesties of Saskkatoon, Christchurch NZ and Newcastle UK in an article under UK in Country by country in menu, and are in touch with the writers who have brought justice to bear on these cases also. See our contact details in menu.
Summary
In 1990, in the Canadian town of Saskatoon, foster child Michael Ross and his younger twin sisters accused their foster family and other relatives of horrendous sex and satanic abuse, including the murder of babies. With the help of conniving therapists, the Saskatoon police had both foster and natural children removed from their homes, including a baby of six months, and then brought criminal charges of rape and other sexual abuses against fourteen individuals and two children. Carried away by the storm of publicity, the Saskatoon police hailed it as the 'scandal of the century'. It may indeed be that now, and covering not one but two centuries, but with the Saskatoon police themselves at its center.
On December 31 2003, Justice George Baynton ruled that the two accused families, the Klassens and their relatives, the Kevlos, had suffered malicious prosecution at the hands of Saskatoon police superintendent Brian Dueck, a therapist, Carol Bunko-Ruys, and Crown prosecutor, Matthew Miazga. His over 200-page judgement is an outstanding manifestation of the capacity for justice to prevail and a devastating indictment of the therapy and counseling industry, the police and the prosecution service.
Despite the outstanding nature of this judgement, which shows police and Crown prosecutors aided by unscrupulous therapists and other ‘expert witnesses’ – all paid for by the state –hell bent on convicting innocent people and then denying them justice, evading responsibility and covering their own tracks, the Province of Saskatchewan appears to have learned nothing. On January 8 2004, in response to the judgement, the Minister of Justice for Saskatchewan issued what the innocent families heard as ‘a most uncompassionate statement’ that the Crown intended to appeal. Our response, and that of our friends, will be to publish more and more information about the injustices and cover-ups involved.
The story and its consequences are rippling throughout Canada and they will shortly spread through the world. If the wise words of the December 31 judgement are heeded by the police, the prosecution services and the legal profession internationally, the tide will indeed have turned in the public perception of sex abuse, and those who masquerade under its title and profit from it, especially those who really abuse children by pretending to befriend them, will have to look elsewhere for their causes.
The outstanding facts for now are as follows:
There was a horrific travesty of justice, in which the stories of three conniving, dysfunctional children were accepted in the face of their obvious lies and distortions.
There was a malicious conspiracy against innocent people by a self-styled ‘team’ of two therapists, a policeman, a Crown prosecutor, and the accusing children.
Justice George Baynton has produced a wise and courageous judgement, and published it in full.
Richard Klassen, one of the falsely accused, who spearheaded and has now won the case, had to represent himself against incredible opposition from the Crown.
Defense lawyers demonstrated disgraceful laziness and incompetence.
The disgraced Province of Saskatchewan is now prolonging the scandal by appealing
Justice Baynton’s judgement.
Apart from the shock to those of us in the West who still believe that we can expect to find justice and liberty, this story will send shock waves through police forces, prosecution services, therapists and social services worldwide, and well it should! It may also shock defense lawyers that a man had to handle his own defense, in a most difficult legal case, to achieve justice. Are defense lawyers so greedy or sated with wealth that they have little interest in defending those crying out for justice?
All who care about justice and liberty should read it and disseminate it as widely as possible. On the practical side, it is full of lessons for those either falsely accused of sex abuse, or suffering from exaggerated or distorted reports of their human sexual acts or affectionate touching. It also exposes the deceit of child truthfulness and that of the absence of sexuality in children. The Ross children were involved in incest with each other before and after they arrived at the home of their unfortunate foster parents.
Above all perhaps, it demonstrates how the police, state prosecutors, and judges, can form liaisons with social services, therapists and other dogmatists to impose their absolutist judgements upon innocent people, and demonstrates that a continuing Inquisition threatens us all.
While just three are indicted in the December malicious defamation judgement, others came in for severe criticism. these include:
A second therapist
An ‘expert witness’ medical doctor
Social Services
Other prosecutors
A judge
We will now add one other individual and group:
The defense lawyer of an unfortunate wrongfully shamed and jailed woman.
Several other defense lawyers. Indeed, perhaps the defense lawyers should be placed at the head of the list of shame.
The story
This continuing story is causing great damage to Canada’s image and in particular to Saskatchewan and the town of Saskatoon. Canadians who may feel let down and humiliated can take comfort from the facts that similar injustices have happened, and are still happening, in other English-speaking countries, and that the wise judgement of Justice Baynton could become a great contribution from Canada to justice and human liberty worldwide, as the lessons in this story apply widely.
Around the time when these events began, Canada was experiencing false rumors of Satanic cults and the ritual abuse of children, most of them fanned by the media, but, disgracefully, also supported by a number of senior politicians. Colin Clay, a university chaplain, had mounted a hysterical campaign based on his assertion that the continent was riddled with a network of Satanic cults and he had organized conferences to which social workers and the police were invited. In many instances, these were sponsored and paid for by employers, such as Social Services, and attendees received educational credits to place on their CVs. One sees the same kind of activity today with ‘child porn’ vigilantes. Current stories about images of pornographic acts with babies, some with umbilical cords still attached, resonate with these earlier Satanic ritualistic tones.
The Canadian authorities suppressed much of the story that follows for years, using that absolutist device of ‘protecting the children’, even to the extent of attempting to shut down a web site and prosecute citizens for lawful protests of their innocence. Evidence was invented and distorted, and, where it did not suit Crown prosecutors, it was suppressed or withheld. What we may learn above all from this story is how little interest many of those in the ‘child protection and child rights’ industry can really have for the welfare of the children they use so unscrupulously.
The Ross family
The old saying that truth is stranger than fiction holds true here. The very beginning of the story is extraordinary. The first characters are the three Ross children: Michael Ross born October 18, 1979 and his twin sisters, Michelle and Kathy, born March 4, 1982. In 1990, when these main events began, Michael was 11 and the twins 8.
They were born into an extraordinary family, described in court as ‘dysfunctional’. Their parents, Don Ross and Helen Ross, were deaf mutes and alcoholics, who did not get on together. In addition, they neglected their three children. Don Ross was a great deal older than Helen, who was a prostitute and regularly brought three or four male customers at a time home with her. In addition, she also had a boyfriend, Donald White. According to the court, the children were exposed to unhealthy sexual activity in their home from an early age. There appeared to have been no love shared between parents and children, and in particular none from the mother. In her eventual trial for sexually abusing her children, a crime it later transpired she was not guilty of, Helen's own lawyer, Jack Hillson, said of her in his closing argument "I have to concede that if all of our mothers were like Helen Ross, it is doubtful that we would have set aside a special day in their honor (Mothers Day)." She was to suffer savage injustice for her apparent lack of motherly love. Indeed, she may be the most lost and tragic figure in this sorry saga.
When justice finally prevailed, and the children withdrew their false accusations against their parents and many others, young Michael, whose testimony can never again be relied on, said that the only person who abused him was his natural father. The judge warned us that it was obvious from his testimony that he still resented his father, so what truth there is in this will never be known. What is known, however, and confirmed by all three children and independent sources, was that Michael had an active incestuous relationship with his twin sisters from an early age, and that the girls also had sexual relations with each other.
This information, however unpleasant, is hugely important. Within this extraordinary, highly dysfunctional, uncaring family, where a mother practiced prostitution in a house shared by her children, husband and boyfriend, and where verbal communications, indeed the very mechanism for forming exchanges of information and feelings between parent and child, were non-existent, little Kathy turned to her twin sister, Michelle, for mothering and other support, and Michelle turned to her big brother Michael for both parenting and support. At an early stage Michael began the sexual possession of both of his sisters, and the sisters learned to play sexually with each other.
There is little doubt that this information, suppressed for years ‘to protect the children’ will not be welcome news to the worldwide counseling industry. Still called ‘abuse’ by the court, when it was finally acknowledged that the only sexual activity experienced by all three was between themselves, mainly the brother’s sexual possession of his sisters, this was in fact incest. A question we could now usefully ask is what are the circumstances in which incest emerges as an activity within a family, and even accept it as ‘natural’, if highly undesirable and even repugnant to most of us, in those circumstances. If the incest of the Ross family had been acknowledged early on, great injustice for many innocent people might have been avoided.
While the sisters were to express their resentment of Michael’s treatment of them after the facts emerged, they also testified that they had looked up to him for as long as they could remember, going right back to the time they were with him in their birth parents' home. They felt that he had looked after them and protected them and they saw him as the parental figure filling the void left by their natural parents. They readily cooperated with him and two therapists in the invention of stories of abuse by adults, appearing to enjoy the intrigue and subterfuge, and, even after they confessed that they resented being abused by him, they expressed their feelings for him. One must consider that if the authorities had not finally confronted them with the social abhorrence of incest, they might not have agreed that they saw it as a betrayal of their trust in him.
We can assume that had the Ross family home situation not been so appalling, Social Services would not have intervened, and the sexual threesome might have continued undetected, especially given the strength of their bond. However, even without the chain of events put in motion by the initial false accusations which were to come from Michael, his sexual appetite was rapidly expanding beyond his sisters to other children, so the authorities would have had to deal with the threesome one way or another. Their refusal to take account of the obvious sexual inclinations of the three, in particular Michael’s, was to greatly contribute to the coming tragedy. In Justice Baynton’s words ‘they (the children) were repeatedly told that their inappropriate sexual activity was the responsibility of their alleged perpetrators’. He went on to say that ‘until a person, even a child, begins to take responsibility for his or her actions, there is little likelihood that long-term therapy or counseling will be of much benefit’, adding that this case demonstrates that the years of therapy the children received from their main therapist ‘provided them with few lasting benefits. Instead, it appears to have harmed them’.
The foster parents
In February 1987, when Michael was seven and his sisters almost five, the three of them were apprehended by Social Services and placed into foster care in the home of Dale and Anita Klassen. Here, unlike at his natural home, Michael was not to have such unrestricted access to his sisters, and the big problems began. It was an unfortunate choice in more than one way. First, because of an unwanted sexual experience in her own childhood, Anita Klassen had asked Social Services not to send them children who had been sexually assaulted, her concern being that her own experience would make it difficult for her to deal with an abused child. In the circumstances, they gave her the worst possible children, about whose sexualization they were well aware. Dale and Anita Klassen had already successfully fostered children, but few foster parents could have coped with what was now to emerge.
The second unfortunate event, which was to amount to a conjunction of cosmic proportions in their lives and those of their whole family, was that within that year Dale’s father, Peter Klassen, who would become known later in the case as the ‘grandfather’ was accused of sexually fondling two neighbor’s children. He was arrested, charged and convicted, and served a brief jail sentence. This now meant that the Dale couple had become a vulnerable police target in the event of another accusation of sex abuse. But they would not have known that.
The touching problem
It soon became apparent that Social Services had ignored Anita’s request and withheld information about the trio. They were touching each other in the Dale home, not only in front of her, but in front of the Klassen’s eight year old Trevor and four year old Jackie. Baby Travis was also soon to come. Despite their efforts to integrate the three new children into the family, they found themselves constantly policing them, in particular Michael, to control or restrict their outrageous sexual activities, between themselves, with the Klassen children and with others. One does not have to be a parent to appreciate the position these unfortunate parents now found themselves in. They resorted to many devices, such as ropes to secure Michael’s bedroom door at night to prevent him getting at the girls. There were few places they could now go on outings, and, even when visiting relatives, the trio’s conduct was such that they would have to cut the visit short to avoid being asked to leave.
As if it were possible, even worse was to be experienced at school, where the Ross children were eventually assigned special supervisors to monitor their ‘touching problem’, as it would later be called by the infamous therapist who was to enter their lives. In Michael’s case, the supervisors had to follow him into the washroom to prevent his sexual advances on other children.
Soon Anita was appealing for assistance from Social Services, but, to her great distress, she found herself ignored. She was constantly being called into school to hear about Michael’s unacceptable behavior. He was barred from the school bus, whereupon she had to face the ire of taxi drivers. The police called when he assaulted other children and started fires. He was expelled from school.
His games with the sisters became even more disturbing when he inserted a butter knife into Kathy’s vagina. After that he sexually assaulted Kathy and several other girls right in the school playground. Things reached breaking point for the Klassen’s when he pushed Kathy in front of a moving vehicle causing her serious facial and other injuries, requiring hospitalization.
The Klassens told Social Services that, while they wanted to continue caring for the sisters, they could no longer manage Michael and requested his removal. Social Services
still did not respond, even though Anita delivered baby Travis on April 1, 1989. Instead of removing Michael from the Klassen home, Social Services engaged a therapist, Carol Bunko-Ruys, to provide him with therapy, and Anita began to bring him to the scheduled therapy appointments in October 1989.
The policeman gets the scent
Word of Michael’s behavior had by now also reached police superintendent Brian Dueck, who, upon the mention of the Klassen name, would have made the connection with Peter Klassen, Dale’s father, sentenced for sexually fondling two neighbor children. The seeds for the great drama were sown. Dueck reached for a possible connection. Then, in a fit of jealousy, Michael threatened to kill baby Travis, and that was all the Klassens could take, so finally, galvanized into action, Social Services moved him on December 12 1989, an action which precipitated the whole horrifying ordeal of the Klassen and related families.
At the beginning we remarked that the story supports the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction. The seemingly bizarre and almost macabre events now continue, but we must not be blinded by an assumption that this was simply an unusual or extraordinary story, because the characters that people it are probably the products of any absolutist society. We might have seen others like them at work in Salem, in Nazi Germany and amongst Senator McCarthy’s accomplices.
What began as a ‘Gothic horror’ story now resumes that genre as Social Services see no easy way of placing Michael, so put an advertisement in a local newspaper. Lyle and Marilyn Thompson respond, she qualified as a ‘special needs’ provider receiving payment for each child at a much higher rate than ordinary foster parents, and being described in the final judgement by Justice Baynton as a ‘therapeutic’ foster mother – in short a therapist, the second to enter the story. Despite this title, neither of the Thompsons had any experience of fostering. It is possible that their large house in the Warman area was paid for, in large part, by Social Services, but this can not be substantiated.
The situation now is that we have Carol Bunko-Ruys doing scheduled therapy with Michael, assisted by an in-house foster mother therapist, Marilyn Thompson. We have friend of Bunko-Ruys, policeman Brian Dueck, waiting in the wings, ready to pounce. It can be assumed that the initiators of the coming tragedy were Social Services, because just before Michael was moved they requested Dueck to interview the Ross children about potential sexual abuse, prompted it seems by their awareness of the Peter Klassen fondling conviction. Some time earlier, Anita Klassen had also reported that upon Michelle returning from a visit to her parental Ross home, she had found Michelle's vaginal area red and irritated looking, with a small amount of blood just inside her vagina. Given the volume of information that both Social Services and the police already had about Michael’s sexuality, including Anita and Dale’s frank descriptions of the trios activities, and their desperation to be relieved of the burden of Michael, the direction that Dueck was to take now in his inquiries was extraordinary.
Dueck interviewed the three children, but, in continuing demonstration of their loyalty to each other or the deference of the girls towards their brother, they revealed nothing, refusing him the ‘disclosures’ he sought. As with much of his later evidence, Dueck claimed to have kept no record of the interviews. One cannot help wondering what was going on inside Michael’s mind during this interview, in view of the revelations he was about to make. One of Dueck’s techniques was to interview children about sex abuse in the local McDonald’s restaurant, before bringing them to a ‘soft room’ with anatomical dolls in the police station. Seeing such Big Mac and Coke rewards for sexual disclosures may have created possibilities in Michael’s imagination.
On May 29, 1990, Social Services asked the medical doctor, Dr. Joel Yelland, to examine the sisters for signs of sexual abuse. He found none, but was to change his opinion later and to join the list of the disgraced.
Michael misses his sisters
Now that he was in the Thompson home, Michael realized that he had a big problem – he wanted to be with his sisters, badly enough to come up with a perverse plan. Already aware that one could provide scripts to gullible therapists, he manufactured one for his new therapist foster mother, Marilyn Thompson. He confided to her that he was very concerned for the safety of his sisters as he had been sexually abused while at the Klassen home. This was the first piece of bait offered, and its acceptance was such that it was to open the floodgates to the ‘disclosures’ which were to follow. His ruse was spectacularly successful. Thompson. reported it to Social Services, who now demonstrated that given the right stimuli they could move with speed. On May 29, 1990, they lifted the twins from the Klassen home and deposited them back into the arms of their gratified brother in Thompsons, where their sexual relations resumed immediately. The success was twofold for Michael: first it brought his sisters back to him and second he got revenge on Anita for having him removed.
Later in his milestone judgement Justice Baynton said, “What followed was a frenzy of leading and suggestive interviews of all the foster children and all the natural children who lived in the Dale Klassen and Pamela Sharpe foster homes.” Pamela Sharpe, a Klassen sister, was another unfortunate foster mother implicated now by being named by the children, one of several individuals to be drawn in thus. This frenzy of interviewing began when Marilyn Thompson revealed Michael’s claim to policeman Dueck, to therapist Bunko-Ruys and, according to Justice Baynton, to ‘numerous Social Services personnel and officials’. Marilyn Thompson was now assuming a key role in the emerging tragedy, but, despite this early involvement, Marilyn Thompson was not to be found years later when the truth was being established, and as this is written it is not clear whether she has gone into hiding or the police have her in protective custody, for fear of what else may emerge. Much of the later delay in obtaining justice was due to the fact that only the unreliable Ross children and Marilyn Thompson could give direct evidence of how these first disclosures had been made, and what was revealed, and she was missing.
In his December 2003 judgement, Justice Baynton confirmed that the present whereabouts of the Thompsons was unknown to the parties, adding, “Dueck testified that he had police services attempt to locate them without success, but I have reservations about the legitimacy of those attempts. The nature of these initial ‘disclosures’ of the (Ross) children and the manner in which they were made or obtained is, especially in the unique circumstances of this case, of critical importance. It has a significant bearing on the legitimacy of the investigation, the charges and the prosecutions. It was also of critical importance to the defense of all 16 individuals charged with the criminal offences. It has a significant bearing as well on the determination of issues raised by this civil case. Accordingly, the evidence of the Thompsons, tested by cross-examination, would have been of considerable assistance to me. Later on, I will relate how the potential evidence of the Thompsons in this regard was in the main kept from the scrutiny of defense counsel and the court on the basis of Miazga's objections.” Miazga is the Crown prosecutor, and one of the three defendants in the malicious defamation case.
The ‘missing Thompsons’ mystery continues at the time of writing, but one can hardly
expect them to continue missing in a Canada now carrying daily headlines about this case. Continuing on this theme, Justice Baynton said, “I did hear the uncontradicted evidence of the three (Ross) children in this regard but for obvious reasons, I do not have a lot of confidence in their unsubstantiated evidence, particularly that of (Michael).”
It will seem all the more bizarre that the three children were reunited when we also learn that there was a Saskatoon police investigation into the possible abuse of Michelle (from the evidence first seen by Anita Klassen), which concluded that Michael and not his natural father was the culprit. Not only was Michael now allowed back to his sisters, but the Ross couple was denied access to their three children.
Expressions such as ‘bizarre’ and ‘extraordinary’ lose their power in this story, because just before the twins were reunited with him, Michael was caught sexually assaulting a three-year old neighbor child named Gus and had been making ‘inappropriate’ sexual advances upon the Thompson’s own natural children. Perhaps someone made a ‘rational’ decision that Michael’s sexual hunger would be more safely assuaged within his own family.
The sun is shining!
After the three were reunited in the Thompson home in May 1990, the stories began to emerge. They would stay up till all hours preparing them with Marilyn Thompson,
who was acting as a kind of assistant to both Carol Bunko-Ruys, now officially appointed as therapist to the case, and police investigator Brian Dueck. This was an exciting and extraordinary time for the three children, Michael eleven and the girls eight. Concocted within their incestuous enfoldment, the stories would be tried out and corrected or improved with Marilyn, and then delivered to the astonished social workers, to Bunko-Ruys, and to Dueck. In addition to McDonald’s type rewards, the three were assured that they were part of a ‘team’ that was out to get the 'baddies'. When it was deemed that they were ready, Bunko-Ruys and Dueck stage-managed and recorded their accusations on videotape. Here, they named forty innocent people. Later when the children recanted, they claimed that Thompson had pestered them for the details of abuse. The judge dryly remarked “It is obvious that they obliged her.”
They told of bizarre and revolting activities, involving group and ritualistic sex of a satanic nature, the sexual abuse and killing of babies and animals, the eating of human flesh and excrement, and the drinking of urine and blood and many other horrifying acts. To any outsider the stories were incredible, but not to their interrogators. Justice Baynton later described them as bizarre allegations and their results a travesty of justice. Amongst those they accused were two children from the families, who would late be charged as ‘young offenders’. Knowing, as we now do, that Michael had been assaulting the children of the families, that two of these innocent victims should be accused and charged thus is a great indictment of the adults who conspired against them – indeed, that rarest of evils, an act of infamy.
The Baynton judgement harshly criticizes the videotaped interviews of the children.
“The interviews depict the (Ross) children, particularly (Michael), as thoroughly enjoying the process. The children had a captive audience comprised of two gullible adults who hung on every word they uttered, nodding in unison at each ‘disclosure’. (Michael) often insisted that he be allowed to demonstrate what he was saying. He drew diagrams and demonstrated with knives that he had brought with him. The only time the children's interest in performing for their gullible interviewers began to wane, was when they began to get tired. Their interest then turned to requesting treats or invitations to eat out at a restaurant. (Editor – probably McDonalds) The children were repeatedly lead by their interviewers with questions that suggested the answers they sought of them. It was obvious, in many instances, that the responses of the children were ‘off the cuff’ fabrications to provide details or explanations for their previous fabrications.
“None of the ‘disclosures’ of the children were gently or even obliquely questioned or challenged but were accepted at face value. Nor were the children properly cautioned about the need to tell the truth. In fact, Dueck repeatedly told them that kids do not lie and that he believed everything they said. They were also told repeatedly by Dueck that, as a police officer, he would get the adults that did these things to them and put them in jail, a comment that was welcomed by the children. Both Dueck and Bunko-Ruys intervened to divert the children from talking about their own ‘touching problems’ and encouraged them to talk about the adults who had abused them and who were responsible for their ‘touching problems’. On at least one occasion, in an interview of some of the other children from whom Dueck had obtained ‘disclosures’, he referred to himself, Bunko-Ruys and the child being interviewed as part of the ‘team’ that was going to get these perpetrators of abuse.
“The conduct and demeanor of the children during the interviews were in stark contrast with the reserved conduct and demeanor that is exhibited by most children when they are being asked questions about potential sexual abuse.”
As part of the drive to create expert corroborative evidence, Social Services instructed Marilyn Thompson to take the three back to Dr. Yelland for physical examinations to detect any indications of sexual abuse, even though he had already said he found none in his earlier examinations of the girls. It should be noted that this ‘expert witness’ did a lot of work for Social Services, being one of the only two they used. He would also have been a client of the police and the Crown, as are many expert witnesses. Now that a full-scale scandal was emerging, his flexibility was remarkable as suddenly he saw plenty of signs of sex abuse. What he actually did was to use the imagined stories of the children as if they were medical facts. Now he says about Kathy: “These findings are highly compatible with abuse having occurred in this child in the form of penetration of the vagina or rectum. The source of this abuse cannot be specified and may be from a penis, digital penetration, or penetration with a foreign body.” For Michael: "This child's rectal findings are compatible with a history of sodomy." Justice Baynton is scathing in his later assessment of Yelland’s witness, noting his claim that ‘these children are victims of ritual and sexual abuse’, for which he had absolutely no medical evidence. Yelland even asserted that the initial ritual and sexual abuse had occurred in their natural parents' homes, and that they were subsequently sexually abused in the Klassen's foster home.
He gave evidence of oral, vaginal and anal sex and cuts and burns.
In the part of the judgement, which savagely criticizes Carol Bunko-Ruys, Justice Baynton says, “This was a case of repeated interrogations initiated by a foster parent in an attempt to obtain ‘disclosures’ of abuse. The fact that the allegations were incredible, bizarre and named a host of adults with no common connection who acted in concert to do things that are inconsistent with human experience, would have alerted a lay person with any common sense to the necessity of proceeding with extreme caution. An experienced and competent therapist would also have been so alerted.” About Dueck’s relationship with the therapists he said, “For over four months, Dueck sat in the wings, so to speak, waiting from a signal from Bunko-Ruys that the Ross children were ‘ready to be interviewed’. He knew that in the interim, they would be making "disclosures" to Marilyn Thompson.”
The most devastating conclusion of Justice Baynton was that all three main parties to the conspiracy, policeman Dueck, prosecutor Miazga, and therapist Bunko-Ruys withheld vital evidence which contradicted or weakened the ‘these incredible allegations’ of the children. “They knew as a fact that (Michael) was having sexual relations with his two sisters while he lived at the Klassens. They also knew as a fact that those relations continued while he lived at the Thompsons. They also knew as a fact that (Michael) was sexually active with many other children. They knew as a fact that (Michelle) and (Kathy) were sexually active with one another and with others. For the most part, the medical reports merely confirmed that the children were sexually active. The findings outlined in the reports also suggested that the children became more sexually active after they left the Klassens and were placed together in the Thompson home. - - - Yet Dueck and Miazga deliberately disregarded these facts known to them that strongly inferred that it was the sexual activity between the children themselves that provided the so-called independent medical evidence upon which they relied. Instead, they seized on the incredible allegations of the children, rather than on the known facts, to infer that the medical evidence pointed to abuse on the part of the 12 plaintiffs.” (The defendants had become plaintiffs by the time of the malicious defamation Judgement)
However one remark from Justice Baynton supplied the heading to these paragraphs. He read out an excited note from Carol Bunko-Ruys to her co-conspirators, as their case against the innocent families was growing stronger by the day. At the end of it she wrote happily: “The sun is shining!”
The natural children are seized and their parents arrested
The police and Social Services swooped upon three Klassen families on July 10, 1991, and seized eight natural children, the youngest a baby of six months. One of these Klassens is the central figure in this story – Richard, brother of Dale, married to Kari.
While it was a bolt out of the blue for all, and the rest were soon to learn to their horror what they were accused of, Richard does not appear to have been named by the Ross children, who may have overlooked him. Richard had an unrelated criminal record dating back to his youth, which apparently was enough for the police to include him in the conspiracy.
The Social Services worker supervising the seizure of eight year old Krystal, two year old Kayla, and baby Brady, reported that the children appeared to be the focus of their home as evidenced by drawings on the fridge and the walls and the presence of toys. Kari Klassen was distraught and crying as she tried to give instructions to the social workers for the care of her six-month-old baby. She wanted toys and other things included along with the child. Richard was shocked and angry, but, being more experienced, he cooperated. As they were being arrested, they asked that the children not witness their being taken away.
As this was happening, Anita and Dale Klassen were also being arrested and their three children seized. Also sought were third brother John Klassen and his wife Myrna and their two children but they were away on holiday, so for the time being Social Services had six children only, but they quickly set about interviewing and videotaping them, and subjecting them to medical examinations. The shocked and bewildered children made no disclosures and the medical examinations revealed nothing.
By the time they seized the Klassen couple who had been on holidays, the police had arrested sixteen individuals and charged them with over 70 counts of sexual assault against eight foster children, including the three who had set off the case. The three Klassen couples, presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law, were kept locked up for a full week before being released on bail. Horrifically, two of their seized children were also charged with sexual abuse, because of accusations by the Ross children, and thus became ‘juvenile offenders’. They were not questioned about what they were accused of, but aggressively interrogated about being abused by their parents.
It appears from the later judgement that policeman Dueck and prosecutor Miazga hoped the two Klassen children would provide the first evidence against the adults from their natural children, as this would support the already apparently unreliable Ross accusations. The implication for the innocent children may have been that ‘we will not put you in prison if you tell us that your parents or aunts and uncles did things to you’. Justice Baynton’s opinion of Dueck’s position at this stage was, “He had committed himself to pursue the charges and he was not prepared to risk his reputation or jeopardize the case he had immersed himself in for the past year and a half by backing off at this juncture.”
Dueck's interrogation of Anita Klassen and her sister in law Diane Kvello were described by Justice Baynton as “far more aggressive, intimidating and humiliating than was required in the circumstances. It is one thing to grill a suspect and to use deception and other disgusting aspects of subterfuge that are at times a necessary aspect of police investigations when dealing with sophisticated, case hardened or street-smart criminals. But the pressure he brought to bear on these two female plaintiffs in particular, was reprehensible.” Assuming that their innocence would be obvious, each had consented to be interviewed without a lawyer present. They were given few details of the allegations and did not know what the children had said they had done to them. Dueck simply said that the children had been in therapy and had made multiple ‘disclosures’ of abuse against them, adding that children never lie about these things and that other children, who had also said they had been abused by the two women, were corroborating one another's evidence. Against their protests, he harangued them, demanding that they explain why young children would make such allegations against them if they were not true. He also sought details of their own sexual experiences as young girls.
Anita Klassen burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably, and, when he continued to bully her, she tried to run out of the room. When brought back, she curled up into a fetal position, and, sobbing in desperation, asked to see a lawyer. Dueck ignored her repeated requests for a lawyer and kept up his demands for an explanation of the children’s allegations. She broke down completely and was later admitted to the psychiatric ward in a local hospital. Her sister in law, Diane Kvello, claimed that after her videotaped interview was concluded, Dueck told her that if she did not plead guilty, he would charge her children. When partially blind and physically disabled grandmother, Marie Klassen, also accused, was arrested, she had to be taken to the police station in her wheelchair. She has since died, asking her children from her deathbed to secure justice someday. Richard Klassen took this request to heart.
Richard and Dale Klassen experienced similar brutal interrogations from Dueck, but they were much tougher and stood their ground. Baynton concluded that Dueck’s ‘investigation’ was in reality no investigation, adding, “The conduct he exhibited in his interviews of the plaintiffs is a strong indication of malice.”
In the days and months following July 1991, multiple charges were brought against the individuals that had been arrested, including the two accused children. While they were bailed, they still had to wait eighteen months for all the charges to be dropped. After their initial release in July, for some unaccountable reason the police did not intervene when they secured the release from care of their own children. One can only imagine the ordeal of trying to resume some kind of life in those days and months after July, in a witch hunt ridden Saskatchewan, where the case was now widely known. Dennis Kvello, accused husband of Pamela Klassen, who died soon after, could no longer to touch his own children or make love to his wife, and asked his employers to switch him from his position as a residential electrician to one as a commercial electrician so that he could avoid coming in contact with any children.
In 2003, Justice Baynton summed up the situation as it was at this time. “The case before me demonstrates how the Protocol (local policy towards allegations of the sex abuse of children) was interpreted and utilized to justify a cause of action that ignored time-tested
legal traditions and violated the basic legal rights enjoyed by the plaintiffs in conjunction with all other members of our free and democratic society. The lives of the plaintiffs have been irrevocably damaged. The unlawful actions of the defendants caused them to be held up to hatred and public ridicule by being branded as pedophiles and wrongfully charged with the most horrible and distasteful crimes in our society. The social problem caused by these consequences would not have materialized had the basic democratic and legal protections and presumptions guaranteed by our Constitution not been sacrificed to address another social problem, the reluctance to accept allegations of child abuse.”
We return to 1991. Intoxicated with their number of arrests, the police leaked everything to the media, who fanned the story into a hysterical national paranoia. It became known as the ‘The Scandal of the Century’
The trials
Don and Helen Ross, the natural parents of the Ross children, were each sentenced to six years imprisonment on December 18, 1992. Helen’s boyfriend, Donald White, was sentenced to three years imprisonment, based on allegations later to be withdrawn by the children. Each appealed and eventually the Supreme Court of Canada allowed their appeals, overturned their convictions, and entered an acquittal respecting Donald White, but directed new trials for Don and Helen Ross, continuing the travesty.
Because she was now known throughout Canada as ‘the mother who fucked her children’, Helen Ross was held in ‘protective custody’, in case of attacks from other inmates at Saskatchewan’s Pine Grove women’s prison. This was in fact known as the ‘Hole’ and was a dungeon off the kitchens. (From time to time, the reader might need repeated that, yes, we are talking of Canada in the 1990s).
This is a good time to introduce that other sorry element in this sorry saga – the defense lawyers. Helen’s lawyer was Jack Hillson, who had said in her initial defense that if all mothers were like her there would be no Mothers Day. There is little further room in this story for this hopeless defender, but I pray that other writers will follow up on him and other defense lawyers like him and expose them for how they have reneged on their duty, especially in their incompetent treatment of penniless defendants. One line more however must be wasted on this disgraceful man.
This unfortunate deaf and dumb woman was left in that wretched dungeon at Pine Grove for six weeks longer than her co-accused males, because lawyer, Jack Hillson, forgot to file her appeal bail.
Has she ever been the subject of Canadian Social Services seminars?
After their shocking arrests and interrogations and a long wait for trial, the trial of the two ‘young offender’ children, was never proceeded with. By early February 1992, all the charges outstanding against them were stayed by the Crown. No verdicts of innocence or apologies were given; indeed, on the contrary throughout all of the stays, limiting further trauma to the ‘abused children’ was the excuse given by the police and crown, thus keeping the reputation of these innocent families in ruins.
At a disgraceful preliminary inquiry trial, criticized later in the Baynton judgement, of the Klassen - Kvello family members, a number of charges were stayed by the Crown, and some family members, including grandmother Marie Klassen, were discharged, but
the judge committed grandfather, Peter Klassen, and ten of the other adults for trial on a number of the other charges, mainly based on the Ross allegations. In his later criticism of the performance of the preliminary trial judge, Justice Baynton said, “It should have been obvious that the poor performance of the (Ross) children was caused primarily by their inability to accurately relate the fabrications they had previously made and their inability to weave new fabrications consistent with those they had previously made.”
This should stand as a warning that in an absolutist climate, little trust can be placed in judges or juries, and not even in defense lawyers.
Justice Baynton also hit out at the expert witness industry, saying, “Miazga (prosecutor) made extensive use in the criminal proceedings of what I will term as ‘child experts’. The experts called by Miazga in the criminal proceedings in this case could also be referred to as child ‘oath helpers’.”
He went on: “The unobjective attitude displayed by Dr. Yelland (medical examiner) respecting sexual abuse allegations is not unlike that of many of the child care workers who gave extensive evidence in the criminal proceedings. Many of the individuals who testified in those proceedings had a financial interest in referrals from Social Services. Numerous witnesses testified about the floodgates opening in the late 1980s in the number of child sexual assaults that began to be reported. As is demonstrated by the evidence in this case, this has created a growth industry for professional child care workers, professional child therapists and medical care professionals.”
The case against the main Klassen adults and the others began to disintegrate somewhat spectacularly, thanks to accuser Michael’s over-confidence. He announced that he had been keeping notes of the abuse they had suffered. The judge adjourned the proceedings so that Michael could bring in his notes. The next day prosecutor Miazga had to advise the court that Michael was lying about the notes. A shaken Miazga then told the judge that he was concerned about the truthfulness of Michael’s testimony, but, incredibly, the judge announced that he was not concerned about the fact that Michael would lie, as if he, the judge, was like so many others hell bent on getting convictions, regardless of truth and justice. About this Justice Baynton was to say: “The preliminary inquiry judge, - - - in my respectful view, once again jeopardized the perception of the impartiality of the court by appearing to encourage the Crown to proceed.”
Miazga and his assistants got on the telephone to their superiors telling them about their fears, but they were told to proceed. The twins were then called to give evidence but their performance was totally absurd, as they even began to add recantation to their contradictions. As the case appeared to be rapidly collapsing, Miazga called in another expert witnesses, psychologist, Dr. Santa Barbara, to try and explain that children could be credible and still make such untrue allegations. Miazga then fell back on ‘the sexualization of the Ross children’ to establish that they had been sexually abused. By now, however, there was little left of their evidence that had not been recanted or contradicted. The Ross children were a much more effective team for the defense than were the defense lawyers.
The final sordid detail before closing this section of the story was that grandfather, Peter Klassen, already dammed by his previous ‘fondling’ of neighbor children, agreed in a plea bargain, which he was told would save his sons and daughters from conviction, to plead guilty to some of the false allegations, and he was sentenced on February 8, 1993 to four years in prison. All the other Klassen-Kvello charges were stayed, but predictably carefully crafted press releases from the police and Crown informed the public that the trial of the century was not proceeding to protect the abused children from further trauma, thus ensuring the continued public shaming of the Klassen – Kvello families and the Whites.
One man, however, was not going to take it lying down.
Richard Klassen
As we have seen, one of those arrested was Richard Klassen. Known as Rick, brother of Dale Klassen (Dale and Anita foster parents of the Ross children), Richard is the hero of this dreadful story. Later, we will seek his permission to publish what we can about him. The fact that he had served a youthful prison sentence for unrelated offenses is widely known and, to his great credit, he meets that head on now. He is self-educated and by now highly educated and an experienced self-appointed lawyer.
When his despair at obtaining justice finally converted itself into rage, he embarked upon
a program of protests, including picketing and the placing of public posters naming his police and prosecution persecutors. He received counter claims (countering his own) of defamation, and was re-arrested. The counter claims made his attempts to obtain justice even harder. The last of these from Dueck has now been dropped with Richard winning his criminal defamation case.
In 1994, he was joined by a Canadian writer, Sheila Steele, who assisted him in setting up the web site, www.injusticebusters.com, through which others (including this writer in Ireland) learned about their ordeal and fight. The Canadian authorities even tried to suppress the web site, but they moved it to a US server, and finally, for legal reasons, Sheila took it over from Richard. Sheila was also arrested for her protests at the injustice. Family members were dying, some prematurely, there were suicide attempts and some were suffering permanent mental damage.
One wonders which side his own lawyer worked for in his first attempts to clear his and his family’s name. The police and Crown, paid servants of the state, put every obstacle in his way, and he was virtually penniless at this stage. The stubborn family, most of whom are painters, living in Manitoba and in the Mennonite community of Winckler, gave him what support they could. In addition to writer partner, Sheila Young, Angela Geworsky, a young woman relative, joined Richard as his legal assistant.
Richard sacked his lawyer and continued his own malicious defamation case against police superintendent Brian Dueck, a therapist, Carol Bunko-Ruys, and Crown prosecutor, Matthew Miazga, and one other prosecutor (who was cleared). The reader will no doubt have noticed Dueck’s promotion - Alas Canada, beautiful country, why do your officials do these things?
In a sad aside, for fifteen years right up to 1998, when he was in the middle of his malicious defamation battle, Richard did not know that one day back in 1988 something terrible had happened, when Anita and Dale and their natural and Ross children came to visit. Both families went walking in the local park. Richard and Kari’s eldest daughter, Krystal, now twenty, was then five. Ten years later, in the midst of these trials, Richard learned that on that day Krystal had been raped while playing in the bushes. We can say no more about this, as Krystal now has her own civil suit before the courts for that attack.
On December 31 2003, in a landmark and just and wise judgement, Judge Justice George Baynton ruled that the two accused families, the Klassens and their relatives, the Kevlos, had suffered malicious prosecution at the hands of Brian Dueck, Carol Bunko-Ruys, and Matthew Miazga. His over 200-page judgement is an outstanding manifestation of the capacity for justice to prevail and a devastating indictment of the therapy and counseling industry, the police and the prosecution service.
In the judgement, Justice Baynton said, “For a year and a half, they lived under the cloud of the serious charges and, after being committed for trial at a lengthy preliminary inquiry, faced a criminal trial and the potential of lengthy jail terms. Eventually, all the charges against each of them were stayed by the Crown, but most of the charges were not stayed until just before their criminal trial was to begin, more than a year and a half after the charges were laid. The three children who made most of the allegations of sexual and physical abuse subsequently recanted their allegations - - -.”
Where are they now?
Michelle approached brother Michael in a correctional facility where he was being held (for unrelated reasons) six years ago, because she wanted him to tell her why he had treated her and Kathy as he had done, but, after first trying to fondle her under the table, he began to strangle her in anger at her betrayal of him, and he was restrained.
Michelle, now 21, is in Pine Grove women’s prison, where her mother was wrongfully incarcerated, and she has had her children taken by Social Services. Kathy, 21, lives freely in British Columbia but has lost custody of the child she gave birth to last spring.
Michael still gets in touch with the Klassens, and called by telephone on Christmas Day. He is living in New York, on the East Side. He has been openly homosexual for some time and dresses in drag.
Epilogue
There is much more for which there was no room in this brief story, especially to do with the corrupt activities of the therapists, police and prosecutors, and with the absolutist doctrines that supported this particular Canadian Inquisition. These will be analyzed in the days and months to come and reflected on this web site.
As a result of this judgement, other travesties of justice are emerging, which we hope to report on, but if you have an interest in these events and care about opposing the continuing Inquisition and the deceitful people it supports, and helping the many people who are still being falsely accused, please copy this widely, particularly to journalists. If you or anyone you know has been falsely or unjustly accused of sex abuse, download and read the Baynton judgement, and insist that defense lawyers read it.
We have much to be grateful for to Richard Klassen and his family and friends.
Editor’s note. This case originated in a place called ‘Red Deer’ in Saskatoon. While all this was going on, another case was in progress, based on events that began in Martensville, only a few miles away. This one, known as the ‘Martensville Nightmare’, also involved illusions of satanic ritual abuse and evidence generated by, or planted in, children. It too, in 2002, finally involved Justice George Baynton and decisions of malicious prosecution. One innocent accused has already received $1.3 million in damages. Researchers may want to read both cases, and links to Martensville can be found at www.injusticebusters.com.
You can help
Richard Klassen could have been forgiven if he just gave up. Dazed at his victory in Justice Baynton’s December 2003 judgement, he has barely had time to take it in when now the Minister of Justice for Saskatchewan announced that the province will appeal the judgement. Two of the innocent individuals have died, and at least one is mentally broken. If the Crown persists, it will eventually survive them all.
But it is yours and my liberty and hopes of justice that are at stake. There are similar cases in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and the US.
You can help by reading the full judgement at Baynton judgement, and the perhaps easier to read version above. Circulate it as widely as possible and in particular to any journalists you know.
If you can help, contact the editor of Inquisition 21st century,
email info@inquisition21.com/.
Country by country
Clint Betterridge - stop this extradition! It's over.
The Peter Ellis story
The Shieldfield travesty
The Saskatoon story
The McMartin and other US stories
Act of infamy – the Nora Wall story
Bart Lauwaert tells his own story
Australia’s criminal involvement in Cambodia
Graham Cleghorn writes from Cambodian prisons
The setting up of Rudolf Knuchel
The Pitcairn sex trial – the cast and the story
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