Comment: Again, in the news story below, we see a mans life destroyed, and the punishment for the false accusers? They retain their anonymity, and it is unknown if they will face any charges.
When will the justice system step up, and start levying harsh sentences in cases like this? As it is, we are allowing a good, decent, caring man's reputation, and livelihood, to be destroyed, with little to no repercussions.
"Despicable" is the only word that comes to mind.
Innocence costs award honoured crisis counselor more than just his life's savings.
BELLEVILLE -- Brian Leckie, whose award-honoured crisis-counselling career goes back more than 30 unblemished years, calls it "a therapist's worst nightmare."
And he is far from wrong.
Two troubled Bancroft-area women -- one purportedly a drug-troubled victim of domestic abuse; the younger co-accuser a "friend" with issues of her own -- put their focus on Brian Leckie, get him charged with two counts of sexual assault and then, before the ink is figuratively dry on his criminal indictment, they launch a civil-action suit to take a run at his money.
Except that it was based on fiction.
In a Bancroft provincial court the other week, Judge Stephen Hunter acquitted Brian Leckie on all charges, and admonished his accusers for having "no credible" legs on which to stand -- the court's transcripts leaving no doubt. But the damage had already been done.
Both the Bancroft Times and the local Belleville Intelligencer wrote of the charges being laid, but little if anything of his charges being dismissed.
There are, after all, no press releases on acquittals.
In a radio commentary for the Haliburton Broadcasting Group, and its collective of Moose-FM stations, I threw more fuel on the flames burning Brian Leckie following the OPP's press release on his charges by writing that he was a counsellor at Bancroft's Crisis Intervention Centre at the time of the alleged assaults, and that his two alleged victims -- both women in their twenties -- were reportedly his clients.
"While we must presume the man's innocence until proven guilty," I reported, "one must nonetheless pine for the two women who, if the facts bear out, were basically re-victimized at the very place where they sought refuge from whatever crisis it was that had turned their lives upside-down."
Well, as it turns out, one should instead be pining for Brian Leckie who, at the age of 63, had his own life suddenly turned upside-down by two women whose allegations were determined in court to be bogus.
And it cost him big-time.
Brian Leckie's professional CV is almost operatic. A fulltime counsellor with Victim Services Canada, working out of the Quinte Health Care here in Belleville (with a satellite office in Bancroft), the former professor for the faculty of psychiatry at McMaster University Medical Centre is a registered traumatologist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), critical incident stress management, workplace harassment ... et cetera, et cetera.
On top of that, he has served as trauma counsellor with the RCMP, the national intelligence service, and the Hamilton-Wentworth emergency response team.
His career has been long, and seemingly selfless.
Following 9/11, for example, he took a leave of absence and went to New York as a volunteer trauma counsellor and was honoured by the New York Police Department with a Commendatory Recognition Award.
"Maybe, with all my professional experience and my hundreds of cases, a red flag should have come up when it came to these two women, but it didn't," he admits.
"Even looking back, I would not have expected this."
Brian Leckie chokes up twice, once when telling how he was called into the Bancroft OPP detachment, thinking it was to discuss a local domestic abuse investigation, and then finding himself charged with sexual assault.
The second time is recounting the costs -- the tarnishing of his good name, and the loss of virtually every dime he had to defend himself in court.
His lawyer fees, in fact, took all of the $115,000 he had socked away in RRSPs.
"No matter how bogus the charges, you need a competent lawyer to defend you," he says.
"If I did not have those RRSPs, I would likely be in jail today," he says.
"As a result, I am now bankrupt -- with an outstanding legal bill of $26,000 for those two days in court, including $6,000 for an expert witness.
"I was suspended from work for six months at Quinte Health Care because of this," he says. "I wonder how many innocent people are in jail today because they do not have the funds to hire a competent lawyer?
"Being innocent gets you nowhere if you are represented by legal aid. It's too great a risk," he says. "Legal aid lawyers, for the most part, don't give a rat's ass.
"And that, too, is the sorry truth."
Not surprisingly, especially with his name being dragged through the mud, and with the whispers around him turning into screams, Brian Leckie has now been diagnosed with the same condition he treats -- post- traumatic stress disorder.
"This has devastated me," he admits, sitting there in his seventh-floor apartment, pulling out one defence file after another ... talking about his own trauma.
"At one point, I honestly thought I was going to jump out the window," he says. "Colleagues gave me those disapproving downward looks at if they believed the allegations against me must have been true.
"Only the ER nurses seemed to give me the benefit of the doubt, because they've seen it.
They've seen the lies and the accusations that come through emergency rooms.
"They see it all the time."
Today Brian Leckie is back on the job at Quinte Health Care, but never again will he treat female trauma victims.
"All it takes is one false allegation, and it's all but over," he says. "I sit here as proof of that."
And nor will he ever return to Bancroft.
"Never again," he says. "Never, ever again."
As for the two women who brought this upon him, their names continued to be protected by a publication ban.
Today, therefore, is just another day.
Link:
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/mark_bonokoski/2009/05/03/9330611-sun.html
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9 comments:
The 2% false rape accusation rate is faulty and inflammatory misinformation that prejudices against innocent men.
The 2% false rape accusation rate is faulty and inflammatory misinformation that prejudices against innocent men.
I will add that the reasoning new gender feminists give for telling the public that false rape acussations are only 2% ( bacause if they told the truth, it would somehow deter the very few girls that have really been rape from coming forward) Is also an irresponsible, and irrational lie, to cover up more lies.
The bottom line here folks is the new gender feminists want to keep the uber-power of being able to lie in courts, and to not be held accountable..LIKE THE MEN ARE!
The 'new gender feminists' you are referring to are not themselves rape victims. They are the prosecutors, judges, rape counselors, advocates, therapists,and other vampires who stand to profit from a 'win at any cost'.
Providing a 'victim' the 'uber-power' to lie enhances their chance of winning.
Mike Nifong enjoyed this power as much as any shrill feminist.
Don't lose sight there ARE true victims, and men DO get away with rape. I know two cases personally, both involving an accused young man with close ties or family members in law enforcement.
The fight here should always be for truth and justice no matter what gender is involved.
Sgt. Mom,
Agreed that the truth is what the fight is about. Too bad those on the other side are so dimsissive, and use false information to drive the public discourse on rape/false accusations.
The anger that a lot of men feel over this issue, to my mind, is justifiable.
I know a woman who has been raped. The thing is, she decided not to wallow in being a 'victim', instead she used a horrible experience to become a stronger person. She now advocates for those who have been raped, AND those falsely accused. Sadly, there are a lot of women who make a career of being 'victim'.
My daughter was raped, then bullied and intimidated into months of silence by the boy who did it because his dad was a cop. Within that same year my son was falsely accused and railroaded into a plea agreement and endless nightmare of being a listed sex offender.
So I too, advocate for both sides.
Neither of my kids have wallowed in victimhood, nor have I.
I find myself advocating more for my son than daughter, simply because she has been allowed to put it in her past and move on.
My son lives everyday in fear for over 10 years now, with no end in sight - in fact, only worse laws and more fear await. This is truly Nazi Germany tactics being employed.
That being said, however, I again repeat, the focus should be on fairness and justice.
The true villians here are the ones profitting from this tyranny - LE, the DAs, the Judges, the advocates, the therapists, so on and so on...
Being angry at women is whacking at the branches of evil. Focusing on the ones rendering the power is the only hope for justice.
Well said, Sgt. Mom. The gender divisiveness is of no benefit. In the real world there are victims of injustice and those who inflict it or allow it. The victims of injustice vary depending on their reproductive organs. Unfortunately, those bearing penises are treated more harshly by a judicial system that shows no mercy to crimes involving male sexuality, and that too often sweeps innocent men and boys in it's vile net.
Sgt Mom,
To a point, I will agree. But there has to be someone who gives those wielding the power a target.
And currently, there are too few women, such as yourself, who are willing to say anything.
With the constant barrage of negativity that is thrown at men/boys in the western world, I understand the anger. But that anger is serving a useful purpose. Sometimes, you have to get angry before people will pay attention. Politeness sometimes just doesn't cut it.
Early feminism understood this. They played on peoples emotions, and were downright shocking when they had to be. This issue, and family court problems, etc., will likely have to do the same thing, as people aren't aware of just how bad the problems are.
Would it be nice to be able to have all side sit down and have a gentle conversation on these issues? Of course. But the reality is a far different thing, and when you are constantly villified for speaking up for a group with little voice in the public sphere, anger can help get the attention of the onlookers.
Pierce and I have attempted to keep from getting to vitriolic with the stories we post, and our comments to them. Our first step/goal is to just get the issue of false accusations in to the public dialog. We are getting there. But there are those who are geared up to fight us tooth and nail, rather than give up thier power and thier status as 'victims'.
But one thing I learned in the military, you don't throw a perfectly good weapon away in the middle of a battle. You don't know when you will need it.
I'm not suggesting 'politeness'.
Believe me, I spent plenty of nights plotting my vengeance and fantasizing the most hideous of punishments. It was my victimized son who asked me to stop my anger..."it's making you look ugly, Mom..."
I was literally poisoning myself with it.
As far as I'm concerned, it's about justice - not 'just us'.
How many times, in the past years, have you heard of a person being criminally charged, prosecuted, and jailed for a crime that eventually they were found not to have committed. Even if you answered 1, that 1 person is just too many. It happens more than you can imagine. It is a pandemic.
I know what I speak of, since for the last 9 plus years, my nearest and dearest friend, Steven Crain, was and still is a victim of being an innocent man being rail-roaded, incarcerated, because of the vindictive, retaliatory, drug using, drug dealing, drug selling, drug trafficking, Regina Hyman, and all because of the fact that Steven would not baby-sit her kids for free. Ms. Hyman filed false charges against him, claiming that Steven had sexually assaulted her daughter. There was never any evidence, just hearsay, and even that had so many lies
I have seen the proof that Steven is innocent and read the transcripts for his year 2000 case that definitely proves his innocence.
I will show, and name names of the government officials from the offices of the Clark County District Attorney, Clark County Deputy District Attorney, Clark County Public Defender, Las Vegas Police Department, Nevada Attorney General, Nevada Parole and Probation, Clark County District Court Judges, United States District Court Judges, Therapists, Attorneys, etc, who to this day, refuse to admit that they were wrong.
The emotional turmoil, the Legal Abuse Syndrome, Steven, to this day, suffer from and the horrific memories of being in jail are even painful to hear about.
Please help me, help my best friend Steven, for once and for all have his name and reputation cleared.
Thank you,
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