Old Order Mennonite man admits to repeated assaults on children

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MINNEDOSA — A judge has reserved sentencing for one of four men charged in a complicated case of systematic child abuse at a southern Manitoba Old Order Mennonite community.

In Minnedosa provincial court on Friday, a 34-year-old man pleaded guilty to six charges of assault with a weapon, plus one charge of common assault.

The assaults were committed between January 2008 and October 2013 against four girls and three boys.

The offender admitted to “repeated assaults” on the children, one of whom is his daughter.

Crown attorney Jim Ross said the man’s second oldest child, a girl, was strapped with a leather belt “for as long as she can remember.”

The strapping or hard spankings happened when she didn’t listen or do what she was told.

When she was young, the girl would often get very scared because she knew this meant she would be punished. The fear would make it worse and she would often throw up, triggering further punishment, court was told.

She was eventually sent to live for a time with the offender’s father, her grandfather —whom the Crown identified as the “main actor” of the core four men who administered discipline — and grandmother, where punishments continued.

The second victim, a 12-year-old boy from the community, was removed from his family’s home and sent to live with the offender’s father in 2011. Once there, the boy was subjected to almost daily abuse for a period of time.

The young boy was questioned by the main actor about sexual interactions with his mother and later with others. When he would tell them nothing happened, he would be told he had pushed it to the back of his mind. It felt like they were mad at him that he couldn’t remember.

The boy would be disciplined for failing to recall and on at least 10 occasions he was made to stand perfectly straight for hours. If he wasn’t standing straight enough when he was checked on, he would be struck.

Other times he was made to crouch on his hands and knees while he was hit with a leather strap. The strap was described to police as three inches wide and one to two feet long, according to the boy. He was strapped on more than 20 occasions with multiple blows each time, the Crown said.

In December 2011, the boy’s father noted that the boy was “black and blue from his butt to his knees.”

That same month, a telephone pole fell on the 12-year-old, requiring medical attention. In hospital, staff noted bruising to the back of the child’s legs, but attributed it to the accident.

The abuse continued and the boy’s ears were also twisted, and the offender admitted to doing this on five occasions.

The boy eventually began to tell the four men — which include the offender’s father, brother and uncle — what “they wanted to hear just to make the abuse stop.” Mainly, that he had impure thoughts and sexual interactions with members of his family.

When the boy recounted the punishments to police, he still believed he must have done sexual acts with his siblings and parents that he could not remember, according to the Crown’s submission.

Ross described the inquisitions and beatings as a “witch hunt,” an obsessive campaign to remove an imagined evil.

As children were punished and began to falsely confess about the interactions with their family or the impure thoughts they were having, they were encouraged to name others they had engaged in sex acts with. These children and adults were then pressured in turn to confess their deviant acts and impure thoughts and by the time police and Child and Family Services stepped in, almost half the community — 10 adults and 32 children —were considered sexual deviants.

Surprising to these agencies, these people often genuinely thought of themselves as deviants who had been “helped to remember” something that didn’t actual happen.

Another boy was sent to live with the offender’s father when he was eight. This child, however, was very firm in denying having done anything sexual with his family, leading to “him suffering a great deal,” Ross said.

The boy was spanked on his bottom, strapped repeatedly as the men sometimes had to take turns when their arms tired of beating him.

A cattle prod was used on the boy, but not by the offender, according to the boy. However, the offender was present when it was used on the boy’s bottom, legs and hands.

Strapping and spanking are consistent across the other four victims, who ranged in age from nine to 13 at the time of the abuse.

Three of the other four victims of the offender were also zapped with the cattle prod, but never identified the offender as administering the shocks.

A nine-year-old boy said the offender’s father seemed to “keep feeding it to drive it forward.” He appeared emotional and angry as he explained this as forcing one child to say something that wasn’t true about another child, which continued until every child was in trouble.

The offender’s brother, deemed to be the “right-hand man” of the father, has pleaded guilty to five charges of assault with a weapon, plus one charge of assault for spanking.

He appeared in a Winnipeg court in April, where details about the abuse weren’t read in court.

He is accused of poking four children with a cattle prod.

The offender’s father is facing 10 charges by direct indictment that include seven counts of assault with a weapon, one common assault and two sexual assault counts.

He has been identified by virtually every member of the community as the “main actor,” according to Ross.

He is accused of using a cattle prod on a 13-year-old girl so many times that it made her whole arm go numb and felt like something was biting her. At times she would lose control of her bladder and wet herself when it was used.

None of the allegations against the main actor has been proven in court.

His wife was sentenced to probation for shocking two girls with a cattle prod and strapping one of them. In that case, the court accepted that she is a kind person by nature who had little choice but to obey her husband and follow his regime of discipline for the girls he placed into their home.

The final man of the core four is charged with at least six counts of assault with a weapon, including a board, strap and cattle prod, involving six children.

None of the allegations against him has been proven in court.

Eight other adult men and women were charged with varying degrees of assault for their roles in the discipline. Those charges were stayed by the Crown in early 2014 after the defendants entered into peace bonds that require them to take further counselling directed by CFS and to have no contact with the core four.

In total, CFS apprehended 42 children from 10 families in the community, according to Ross.

Thirty-eight of the children are now back living with their families, who have engaged in counselling and parenting classes.

Two of the main actor’s children were made permanent wards of CFS, while two other children, aged 15 and 13, refused to return.

“They say they do not trust that the community has really changed and fear harsh discipline will return once CFS stops monitoring the community,” the Crown’s submission states.

For his part, the offender read two letters in court on Friday.

In front of a packed courthouse with many of the members of the community in attendance, the man said he was “sorry and ashamed,” while fighting back tears.

He said he takes responsibility for his actions and that he knows they were outside of the boundaries of the church and the law.

He hopes to continue to work with CFS, which has allowed him to be around his children provided there is supervision. His wife qualifies as supervision.

The man said he looks forward to the day he can apologize to all of the children directly and regrets the physical and emotional pain he has caused.

“I should have been a better example,” he said.

His defence lawyer, Ryan Amy, described his client as a hard-working man who should have stood up to his father.

A 2015 psychological assessment showed him to be a low risk to reoffend, remorseful and a follower.

“He doesn’t minimize the hurt he has caused, he doesn’t try to justify based on religious beliefs,” Amy said about his client’s ownership of what he did.

Amy said his client is the financial provider for his family and community.

Since returning to the community, the man has purchased a bell for the new school after the old school was burned down due to its connection to the discipline. He has also built a slide, monkey bars, teeter-totter and provided the wire for a new baseball diamond.

Amy said his client has thought of ways he could give back to the community, paying for these items through money and labour.

The man has also repented for his actions in church.

Amy requested a conditional sentence that could be served in the community.

The Crown is seeking a jail sentence between 12 and 18 months.

Judge John Combs is expected to hand down his sentence in December.

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