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The Current Transcript for July 4, 2019

Host: Megan Williams

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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He points me towards the dressing room and like a fool, not suspecting anything, I proceed and entered the room. He closed the door and bang. He threw me up against the wall.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: When advice columnist Jean Carroll bumped into the chatty property mogul Donald Trump outside a New York department store in the mid 90s, she got a bang out of their banter. So she says she did not expect that within minutes she'd be fighting him as he sexually assaulted her inside a change room. It's a claim Donald Trump denies. In her new book entitled What Do We Need Men for, Carroll creates a list called The Most Hideous Men in my Life and places Trump firmly on it. I'll speak with her in a minute about why she's come out with her story now and what we do need men for. And then,

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What happened during Project Houston? Why didn't we catch him sooner? Why did we have to lose eight people? Where did police mess up the royally.

MW: A community in grief and anger asks how a serial killer in their midst was able to keep operating. We'll return to the CBC podcast Uncover: The Village. Today's episode delves into how a serial murderer targeted gay men in Toronto and went undetected for so long. Hello I'm Megan Williams and this is the summer edition of The Current.

Why E. Jean Carroll waited almost 25 years to accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault

Guests: E. Jean Carroll

MW: For years Aegean Carol encouraged her readers to speak up. Now she's finally doing it herself. The advice columnist and author is accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her more than 20 years ago. As with previous allegations, he has called this one a lie. Her new book is What Do We Need Men for, A Modest Proposal. E. Jean Carroll joins me from New York City. And a warning we will be talking explicitly about the assault. E. Jean Carroll. Hello.

E. JEAN CARROLL: Ms. Megan, Hello.

MW: Hello. Now your book is what you describe as a merry romp through towns of North America finding out from women what they need men for, and in the book you also make a list of various what you call Hideous Men you've encountered, one of whom is now the president of the United States, Donald Trump. Tell me what Donald Trump did at New York's Bergdorf Goodman department store, 20 plus years ago, to land on your hideous men list.

E. JEAN CARROLL: Well I had my name listed. He is married. They're very hideous. So in order to make it on the hideous men list, the man has to be extremely hideous. And this is what happened to me in 1996. This is New York. This is at one of the poshest department stores in the world. And we have to remember back in 1995-96 or actually in the 80s and the 90s, Donald Trump was a admired and just admired figure in New York. People love seeing him on the street. He had a good word for everybody. Talked to everybody as he was walking down the street. He was almost like a Falstaff a Shakespearean character. I wouldn't go so far as to say we all loved him but he was- he cut quite a figure.

MW: And he was a celebrity.

E. JEAN CARROLL: Big time because he loved being famous. We all love that he was famous and wherever he went people would come around.

MW: So you get so you bumped into him. What outside the department?

E. JEAN CARROLL: He was outside I was inside. He held up his hand. He came in he said ''Hey you're that advice lady'. And I said 'Hey you're that real estate tycoon'. He said 'Come advise me'. I said 'Oh what about?' He said 'I need to buy a gift'. I said 'Oh for who?' He said 'A girl'. Well Megan I was delighted. I was delighted it was going to be- You know I'm just tickled to death. This is a story that I can go out to dinner on to the next year. So I pointed to the handbags shoes we were standing right there. He didn't like the handbag idea. And we went to the hats. All this time we're bantering right back and forth back and forth. I am having such a good time. And I said 'How old is the young lady?' And he looked at me and he said 'Well how old are you?' Unfortunately told In 52. He said 'You're so old'. So not long after the 'You're So old' line he said 'I know. Lingerie' or he could have said underwear. I'm not sure. So we go up the escalators and it's a long haul up to whatever floor it was. We get off. And by the way this is in the evening. And there's hardly anybody in the store. We walk down to the lodge. Still bantering. I am still laughing. Now I think it's getting better and better. Lingerie is even funnier. So it gets the lingerie department, nobody's there. Plus there was a door. But on the counter are a couple of boxes and a filmy see through bodies suit and he snatched it up. He said 'Go put this on'. I said 'you put it on'. He said 'No'. He held her against and he said 'You could fit into this let me see how it looks'. I said 'It goes with your eyes. You put it on'. And in my head I'm thinking- I used to be a writer at Saturday Night Live. So I am already thinking this is one of the funniest scenes I have ever been in in my entire life because my idea Megan is to make him put this body suit on over his pants.

MW: This is the story you're going to be telling other people later, obviously.

E. JEAN CARROLL: For years. I will be telling it for years. It couldn't be a better story. So he pointed me towards the dressing room and like a fool, not suspecting anything, I preceded and entered the room. He closed the door and bang. He threw me up against the wall, knocked my head really hard. And he pressed his lips against my lips. I was so stunned I couldn't- I just couldn't believe it. And I was so surprised that I just I just kept laughing. And then it turned very serious. Then I started to fight. It was a brief episode. It hurt.

MW: What was he doing at this time?

E. JEAN CARROLL: Well he unzipped his pants and inserted his penis. He held me against the wall with his shoulder. He's big. Now I'm a tall athletic woman. I was a competitive athlete. So I was not a small one. I was tall, was six one at my heels. But he was big and very strong and he held me against the wall. It was a brief, very brief, moment. I fought the entire time and it was against my will. I got out very quickly and left. I guess I was laughing. I don't know I was laughing but when I got down to call my friend she said 'E. Jean this is not funny. Stop laughing'. So I must've been laughing the whole time again. I don't have any recollection.

MW: Do you remember - you called a couple of friends after you have since come forward - but do you remember the source of the laughter subsiding at a certain point and feeling something different?

E. JEAN CARROLL: I mean I wasn't laughing on the way home. I can tell you that at the car. But Lisa really did have to say, Eugene, this is not funny. You've got to stop laughing. It was just I think it was the adrenaline [unintelligible] me and I think started by laughing and I think I just I just don't think I've stopped.

MW: And after you told the two friends did you, I mean did you ever think about it or did you ever talk about it again?

E. JEAN CARROLL: Well, Megan, my whole personality is based on moving on a the chin up, my [unintelligible] is chin up. And if I'm going to remember something, if it's very unpleasant, I'm going to try not to remember it again. I really really do not dwell on the past which is one of the reasons I'm a pretty happy person. I found in my life that if I think with sadness about an event it just doubles the burden. But I've found if I laugh at an event in the past I found I can quickly move on.

MW: Now in the lead up to the presidential election a number of women came forward to say that Donald Trump had either sexually assaulted them or just plain assaulted them. You kept silent during that time why was that?

E. JEAN CARROLL: Because I could see it was helping him. As the women came forward he got he became more and more popular.

MW: So what was it like for you to watch on election night as he won the presidency?

E. JEAN CARROLL: I was stunned. By the way the stories about women going forward didn't hurt Bill Clinton either. Remember that. When they have remember in in the world that we watch women put their reputations on the line. We watch women put their livelihoods on the line to come forward and say what happened with their leaders, say Clinton and Trump, and the men are elected, not despite, but many times because these women came forward. So when he was elected.

MW: You weren't surprised.

E. JEAN CARROLL: I'm like almost a century old now. And so nothing surprises me.

MW: But you have decided to tell your story now and there's an election. It's not around the corner but it's not far away so why tell your story now?

E. JEAN CARROLL: Well see that's the thing. I say that one of the reasons I've held back is because I thought it would help him. Now I have to tell my story because as you know 2017 Megan Tuohy and Jody Kanner dropped the Harvey Weinstein bombshell on the front page of The New York Times. And the me too moment surged and women across the country started to stand up and tell their stories. But what happened is I write the ask Eugene column in Elle magazine. And so the letters I was getting from my correspondence were 'E.J., should I call the police about my boss?' 'Eugene my stepson I think is abusing his daughter, should I call the police?' So they're asking me and I'm just full of malarkey because I've never admitted you know any of these things have happened to me. So I just felt that I had to, because I love my correspondence and because you know I felt like they were owed the truth about the person they're writing to. I did not call the police.

MW: Now of course you know Donald Trump has said a number of things. He said that you are not his type and the president when I want to get your reaction to that as well as the accusation that you're just making these accusations now to sell books.

E. JEAN CARROLL: We almost kept it quiet. I was not particularly interested in having everybody know it. I just thought it was a hideous man one of 21 Hideous Men. Of course the minute New York magazine hit the stands it became a heroine. But that was not me, or that was not the publisher. We really did not bank on this.

MW: That it would get the coverage it got.

E. JEAN CARROLL: No. Who would think that seven days every day- Who would even conceive of that.

MW: But there was also criticism of the fact that it didn't actually get a lot of coverage initially. The New York Times ran an opinion piece by its executive editor admitting that it underplayed your story and others have commented on what appears to be a lack of urgency in the press over an allegation that a sitting president of the United States committed what by common definition is rape. What do you think about the way the media has covered your story?

E. JEAN CARROLL: Well I'm delighted with it. The journalists rallied around me because one of their brothers- You know they are my brothers and sisters in journalism. One of their own was maligned by the president and they did come to my side. That was there. It was such a wonderful feeling. I was in a cocoon of love and I don't know what more they could do. The Washington Post ran five stories. The L.A. Times. They all ran stories. The reaction is that nothing happened even though these stories ran. Now that is the real conundrum.

MW: Does that surprise you?

E. JEAN CARROLL: Well I have no expectations about this. It's very hard to be surprised about anything because every day I was surprised by something he's doing, every single day. So this does not surprise me.

MW: Now I wanted to ask you about your own description of the incident that happened, the attack that happened with Donald Trump, the attack against you by Donald Trump, which you know some prosecutors and many others who read your account say what you described was in fact rape, but you don't describe it that way. Tell me how you describe it and why?

E. JEAN CARROLL: Well rape is a heavy word in this culture of sexual violence. Rape is one of the worst. And it's an action that turns a woman into a victim. And I have none of that because I am, A, past this event. B, it was just a few minutes out of my life. C, I was not the victim. I fought. I just see it as a fight not as a rape. That is - in my mind - a totally different thing. Women are getting raped down on the border right now. They're being raped around the world. Child brides. Those women are being raped. Mine was a few minutes. I got away. I have moved on. I'm a happy woman. So I just I see it as a fight.

MW: Right. But yet in your book you write that after the fight that you had with Donald Trump you never had sex again.

E. JEAN CARROLL: I put that down to luck. I haven't met a really great guy.

MW: So no it wasn't connected to what happened with Donald Trump.

E. JEAN CARROLL: I'm sure there are millions therapist who will say it's connected with that block, that 15 minutes. I put it down to luck. I just had it- You know and who knows maybe I will as soon as I get off the phone with you, Megan. Maybe I'll meet you know somebody who will come up my river here on a boat, jump out, squeeze me in his arms, and that will be it. You know it's hard to describe reasons. I know people say that I've been somehow harmed but I don't see it.

MW: Now the speaker of the House - I want to get your reaction to this - Nancy Pelosi was asked about your accusation against Donald Trump and this is what she said.

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I respect the concerns that are expressed by women as they present their, truth their case. As I said I don't know the person. It doesn't matter if I did or not. I respect that but I don't know what Congress's role would be in this but in any of these things this is about not what Congress will do. This is about what the president's own party would do. You'd really have to ask them. But I'm busy worrying about children not being in their mother's arms because of the policies that we may have.

MW: E. Jean Carroll that the speaker got a lot of pushback for appearing to shrug off your accusation against the president. What do you think about what she said?

E. JEAN CARROLL: I agree with her. She's got kids down there who are without their mothers, without beds, without water. Some of them don't have milk. Women are being raped down there. I think Nancy Pelosi is right about she does have important things to do. The fact that there is a sexual harasser in the White House, a man who has repeatedly violated women, she says is not a matter for her party. She says it's a matter for the Republicans. I see nothing will happen.

MW: You get so many letters from your readers as you yourself say most of which talk about the hideous men in their lives.

E. JEAN CARROLL: That's what set me on the road in the first place all these letters are women. No matter what their problem was, Megan, it was you know, it came that- Okay let's say they're writing me. They don't earn money, their finances, their orgasms, their kids, their religion, their love affairs and their careers. You know 90 percent of the time there is a line in the letter where the cause of the problem is revealed and that cause is men. So I want to get rid of men.

MW: [Laughs] Sorry. Say that again.

E. JEAN CARROLL: I want to get rid of men.

MW: Okay. Because I was going to ask you after your travels, experiences and hearing so much from other women about the matter, I was going to ask you what do you need men for?

E. JEAN CARROLL: I'll tell you. I do need men to come like this guy's coming today to fix my ultraviolet bulb on my water supply. I like it as they clear the snow. Men are very very useful. We need them, you know and a lot of women- I love it. Okay. I love them. I just don't want to run everything.

MW: Okay. We'll leave it there. E. Jean Carroll, thanks so much for speaking with me today.

E. JEAN CARROLL: Thank you Megan.

MW: E. Jean Carroll's new book is What Do We Need Men for: A Modest Proposal. She was in New York.

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MW: CBC News is next. Then, they might be covered. They might be overt. But there a little debate that foreign actors are working to undermine Canada's democratic institutions. We'll find out how vulnerable the October federal election just might be. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Canada needs to do more to combat disinformation in upcoming election: ex-justice minister

Guests: Allan Rock

MW: Hello I'm Megan Williams, and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. Still to come episode aid of Uncover The Village. It's the CBC investigative podcast about the case of serial killer Bruce McArthur. He pleaded guilty to murdering gay men but that didn't end the questions about why he was able to lure and kill a gay man for so long. But first how to interfere with foreign political interference.

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GOODALE: We're bringing all of our modern defence mechanisms to bear for the objective of making sure that Canadians can make their own independent impartial decision on the basis of what they truly believe as Canadians is the right thing to do and not manipulated by a foreign capital.

MW: Since the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election foreign interference and democratic processes has been an increasingly urgent problem. Now with the federal election only months away here in Canada politicians here have been trying to protect Canadian institutions from just that. Earlier this year Ralph Goodale Canada's Public Safety Minister unveiled a number of measures to protect against that kind of meddling. But the warnings continue in a new report and the Toronto Star Canada's security intelligence agencies are warning of quote: "covert and overt foreign attempts to influence the election". My next guest has been studying ways to stop the interference. Allan Rock is a former federal Justice Minister and law professor at the University of Ottawa. He's also the Canadian commissioner for the Transatlantic commission on election integrity. That's a group of former political leaders from around the world set up to fight foreign interference. We've reached him in New York City. Hello.

ALLAN ROCK: Good Morning Megan.

MW: Good morning. What do you make of this news report that reveals both CSIS and the Communications Security Establishment, Canada's Cyber Defence Agency, are sounding the alarm about election meddling?

ALLAN ROCK: Well we've been getting these messages consistently now for some time from CSIS and other security intelligence sources and the message is really very clear: Canada is not immune from this kind of malign foreign meddling. And indeed there are some foreign states with an axe to grind motivated to do us harm, and they include Russia and China and Iran. And by the way it's not just during elections. It's a vulnerability for our democracy, generally. It's just it's heightened during the election period.

MW: And I suppose much more dangerous during election periods as well. Now when we talk about covert and overt attempts to influence the election. Can you give me some examples of what that looks like?

ALLAN ROCK: Well there are a number of concerns. There's the hacking and leaking of emails or other information. We saw this in 2016 with the Democratic National Committee's emails being leaked. There's disinformation. You know it's possible to put information out there that might look credible on its face and mislead the voter: a political leader has a criminal record or is addicted to opioids or as the case may be. There are now deepfakes, so-called. Those are videos that are prepared through artificial intelligence to make it look exactly like the person in real life. And then one puts words in their mouth that are shocking and discredit the speaker. There's impersonation; you can use email or a Twitter post to pretend you're somebody else and gives the appearance that somebody is saying something that they're not. But there's also more subtle methods like manipulating the so-called popularity indices on social media - the false 'likes'. And that'll give the impression that a particular extreme view is more broadly held than it is. And of course the foreign actors also depend on the extreme elements in Canada to retweet or recirculate the information they're putting out there. And if I can mention just one last vulnerability, I was in Copenhagen last week for a meeting of the commission, and one of the top concerns expressed around the table was that there could be a cyber attack on Election Day for example. We all saw what happened in Argentina a couple of weeks ago and the whole country went dark because of a failure of the electrical grid. It's not certain who did it or why, but it demonstrates the vulnerability. Can you imagine if on election day in the United States, the power went out completely in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, some of the swing states - the chaos that would cause? Imagine it in Canada, if Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver had a complete power failure on the Election Day, so that issues arose - you know, who won? Should there be a do over? Imagine the partisan argument, imagine that the chaos that would be caused --

MW: Right, an attempt to create chaos. Now CSIS says that in the past they've seen specifically targeting here in Canada of the diaspora communities. Tell me a bit about that.

ALLAN ROCK: Well I think that it's another example of trying to undermine social cohesion, stir up controversy, inflame controversies that are already out there, broaden cleavages in society. So if you were to go into a diaspora community where certain topics are particularly controversial - whether it's immigration or whether it's abortion or gun control or whatever the issue may be - it's sort of easy pickings because you have a specific group with a defined topic where you know there's controversy and underlying strong feelings; if you stir up those feelings you can undermine social cohesion, and you can also perhaps steer of the diaspora in favour of or against the preferred candidate. I don't see a lot of evidence that the foreign actors are trying to favour particular candidates. Their objective is really to cause chaos and disrupt democracy. But diasporas can be vulnerable.

MW: I'd like, we don't have that much time left, but I would like to talk about solutions. And last month the trans-Atlantic Commission on Election Integrity released a report in Canada and you said Canada can do more. Tell me what Canada's doing and what more it should be doing.

ALLAN ROCK: Well Canada gets high marks from the International Commission -- and by the way it's a nonpartisan commission with conservatives and liberals and Republicans and Democrats. But they gave Canada high marks for the number of steps that were taken; strengthening the election laws, creating cyber security coordination. This protocol has been put in place attracted a lot of international attention.

MW: Can you quickly tell me about it? What is it that Canada's doing?

ALLAN ROCK: Address to the Comey? Problem, Megan. So if in the middle of the election it becomes apparent to the security services that there is disruption going on, or disinformation with a real threat to undermine the legitimacy of the outcome, then there's a panel or a protocol group of senior officials -- not politicians -- who decide whether to go public with that. And in their judgment if they feel it can affect the election outcome, they make a public statement to clear up the disinformation. That's very courageous; first time it's been done. We've met with some American members of Congress who are interested and are going to look at that approach. As to what remains to be done? It's how to deal with social media platforms. Simply asking them to do the right thing has not worked. And why should it. Their obligations are to their shareholders to increase value, not to the Canadian public.

MW: So little more legal oversight on sites like Facebook and that kind of thing?

ALLAN ROCK: Well it's not that easy because there is freedom of expression and Canadians don't want the government deciding what's true and what's not. We have to respect the charter guaranteed freedoms of information. But there are things that can be regulated without getting into being the truth police.

MW: All right. Allan Rock I'm going to have to leave it there. I'm sorry we've run out of time but thanks very much.

ALLAN ROCK: Thank you, Megan.

MW: I've been speaking with Alan Rock who is a former federal Justice Minister and law professor at the University of Ottawa. He's the Canadian commissioner for the transatlantic commission on election integrity. He was in New York City.

Uncover: The Village Ep.8

MW: I'm Megan Williams And you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. For the past couple of weeks we've been featuring the latest season of The Investigative CBC podcast uncover Justin Ling looks at the case of serial killer Bruce McArthur and how the murders of gay men affected the LGBT community in Toronto. And just a warning some listeners may find the details disturbing. This episode of the village is called A Confession.

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REPORTER: He was charged with eight counts of first degree murder. Trial had been set for about one year from now in January of 2020.

REPORTER 1: Check one two three one two one two three check one two. One two three check one to. Are you getting it there? One two three.

JUSTIN LING: It's a freezing day in January 2019. Almost a year to the day that Bruce MacArthur was arrested. There's a horde of reporters and camera crews gathered outside of downtown Toronto courtroom.

DAVID: Good morning everybody. Thank you for attending.

JUSTIN LING: Detective David Dickinson comes to the microphone.

DAVID: I just want to recap today by saying at approximately 10 a.m. this morning Bruce McArthur attended the Superior Court of Justice here in Toronto at which time he pled guilty to eight counts of first degree murder.

JUSTIN LING: That morning in one of the biggest courtrooms in the city it is packed with journalists, cops, community members and friends and family of the victims. McArthur is led into the massive courtroom wearing a black sweater and a plaid shirt underneath. He looks paler and thinner than the last time I saw him. The judge reads out each of the first degree murder charges and asks how he pleads.

JUDGE: That was for the murders of Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, Majid Kayan, Soroush Mahmoudi, Kirushna Kanagaratnam.

JUSTIN LING: You can feel the whole room holding its breath.

JUDGE: Dean Lisowick Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman.

JUSTIN LING: McArthur replies, eight times in a row, in a low voice: Guilty.

JUDGE: I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and acknowledge the family and friends of the victims in this case. It has been a long and traumatic process and many made the difficult decision to attend in person today. We, myself and the investigative team, are pleased that Mr. McArthur has pled guilty today, sparing the community and those who knew the victims a lengthy trial. I believe that this is the best possible outcome for the families and the community. We unfortunately can never bring these men back. But I'm hoping we can start bringing some closure to the families in the communities. Thank you everybody.

JUSTIN LING: There would be no trial but there is an agreed statement of facts. Through that we learned the horrific truth about what Bruce McArthur did. Outside the courthouse I'm going through the details with my producer Jennifer.

JENNIFER: He's pledged to first degree so that means it was premeditated.

JUSTIN LING: [To Jennifer] It was planned and deliberate was the language they used. There's references in some of the counts to staging the bodies. But he took pictures. And they have them. So.

JUSTIN LING: There were indignities done to these men that I'm not going to describe. Had there been a trial it would have released photographs that no one needs to see.

JUSTIN LING: [To Jennifer] So he kept basically souvenirs of all, some or all of his victims. One of Skinman's bracelets. A chain that Dean Lisowick had. He had Selim Esen's [notebook.

JUSTIN LING: MacArthur kept a lot of things. Police found copies of the missing persons posters in his apartment. There were newspaper stories about the murders on his computer. McArthur even saved a story I had written about how the disappearances of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen had revived fears of a serial killer, back at a time when police said there wasn't one.

JUSTIN LING: [To Jennifer] The police located Mr. Kinsman calendar which had an entry for Bruce on June 26, 2017. That was the day he was murdered. A big piece of that evidence was a note left by Andrew Kinsman himself. In hindsight he left the name of his killer on his calendar. That note in Andrew's calendar simply said 'Bruce'. That afternoon June 26 2017 neighbourhood surveillance footage caught Andrew getting into a red Dodge van with an unknown driver. So police got a list of all of the people in the province who owned that model of Van, 6000 owners in total, but only five were named Bruce, and only one of those men had had previous contact with police. Bruce McArthur. Remember he had been interviewed in 2013 during project Houston but that wasn't the only time McArthur had been questioned by police.

VOICE: He goes, 'get in the van, get in the van. Lie down.' He wanted to have sex right then and there.

JUSTIN LING: In the summer of 2016. Bruce McArthur met a man for sex. They had been seeing each other on and off for years.

VOICE: So he says put your arm over your head and turns from a smile a scowl. Yes scowl on his face and a look of anger, hatred. And with this full force with hand, open hand, trashed my neck.Man that hurt.

JUSTIN LING: That man has never been identified publicly. But he has spoken to some other reporters. He escaped the back of McArthur's van. He called 911 and he reported the assault.

VOICE: I know he was going to kill me.

JUSTIN LING: McArthur raced to the police station as well. He told his version of what happened that it was all consensual. Police chalked it up to a he said-he said situation. MacArthur was never charged and he was let go. The officer who interviewed him that day is facing disciplinary charges. He says he followed all the right procedures and didn't even know about the investigation into the men missing from the village and that he's being scapegoated by his own police service. His disciplinary case is ongoing.

JUSTIN LING: [To Jennifer] So the family are planning on reading impact statements next week and they're planning on being there for a lot of the hearings.

JUSTIN LING: For two days friends and family of the victims have the chance to read statements to the court as do members of the community who reread them for us.

GAB: We loved and cared for Selim. He was part of our community and along with the pain and loss of Selim is the pain in wishing we could have protected him and prevented this horror and the sadness.

JUSTIN LING: They are heartbreaking. Many people experience nightmares, PTSD, depression.

TINA: It's impossible to overstate the impact these murders have had on Toronto's LGBTQ community.

GAB: It's hard to know where to begin and how to find words to describe the profound and far reaching emotional impacts of this heinous crime.

TINA: There's a concept within the LGBTQ community called chosen family. The men who were killed were brothers.

JUSTIN LING: People's lives are put on hold. They can't sleep or eat. They can't work. They can't go to school or take care of their families.

TINA: My name is Reverend Tina Dudley and I'm the assistant pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. The people who were friends, co-workers and acquaintances of the victims, that grief is immediate and deeply painful.

GAB: My name is Gab Lawrence and I'm the manager of Community Initiatives at St. Stephen's Community House. Nothing can reconcile what happened. There is nothing more heinous than deliberately seeking out the most vulnerable of individuals.

TINA: Even with the defendant in custody. It feels less safe. It feels less trustworthy. It feels less like home and family.

JUSTIN LING: Friends and family say the city has become a dark and scary place.

TINA: A few who had close encounters with the defendant are virtually unable to leave their homes to this day because of their quite legitimate fears. We should be angry when we and our friends are subjected to hate and violence. We should be angry when we're stalked and our community becomes a hunting ground. There will always be the dreadful memories, the horrendous grief, the fears, the anger but throughout the LGBTQ community is also strong and resilient and we too will survive, but have been changed forever.

HARAN: I've been in touch with most of the families especially the Sri Lankan Tamil and with Soroush's family as well as Selim Esen's family.

JUSTIN LING: Vijayanathan was also in court that day. He runs an HIV AIDS service organization for South Asian and Middle Eastern men in Toronto. So when men from that community started disappearing he became deeply involved in their cause.

HARAN: And those three men who went missing looked like me and one of them was a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee. And when Skanda went missing I saw myself in him.

JUSTIN LING: When Skanda and all of the men were found became a lifeline for many of their families.

HARAN: What was really hard is explaining to the families why the police can't say certain things to them because they don't know it themselves, right. It's like why did Bruce do what he did? Were they alive while all of this was happening to them? Especially talking to Christian and Kumar's mom you know this elderly woman who doesn't speak a lick of English and you're looking at her face and trying to explain that there is not a lot of answers that she is going to get. All of the other stuff that a mother wants to know when her child passes she won't get anything back. That was the hardest one to work with and I helped organize their funeral as well and understanding some of the cultural and religious practices where we actually have to see the body of the individual and we have to perform rites of putting rice in their mouth and water and there's a whole prayer in Puja that's done around this whole thing that they'll never ever get to do that. You know sometimes I wonder because I can hear my mother asking this question is if she's wondering did I do everything that I could do to ensure that he has a good afterlife.

JUSTIN LING: Bruce McArthur will serve life in prison but he will be eligible for parole in 25 years when he is more than 90 years old.

HARAN: What happened during project Houston? Why didn't we catch him sooner? You know knowing what we know now that versus name did come up in Faizi's diary of some sort that he was investigated. Why did we have to lose eight people? The biggest question for me is, in 2013, where did the police mess up royally?

MARK: I put specialized people when we started Project Houston to look at, to work with the community, to interview as many people as possible. This was not taken lightly and still not.

JUSTIN LING: That's Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders. After MacArthur's conviction Toronto police hold a press conference. There's barely room to move the media gallery is so full.

MARK: This was not a case of the police didn't think anything was going on. We knew something stunk. There is no ifs ands or buts, which is why we put millions of dollars into it. We knew something stunk and we did everything we could to find it and we just didn't.

JOURNALIST: Reflect on what it means, you had a serial killer in the police station, you let him go.

MARK: I feel very strong about the hard work that was done by trying to police service not agency said assisted us. A lot of people are satisfied with the investigation when they sit down and listen to what happened and how it broke down. Some need answers to questions, as you are asking right now, and others are not satisfied that was accurate and right when I said at this time there is no evidence to say that we had a serial killer. I can tell you the moment that we knew what we had, the moment we had evidence to tell us that, we acted immediately and that's why we have this conclusion right now.

JUSTIN LING: Detective David Dickenson comes to the microphone. I ask him what more did you need.

DAVID: Justin the evidence was there on January 17th of 28. And at any point when he was elevated to a person of interest to a suspect, the people and the resources changed to mitigate any risk to the public and at the end of the day the people did what they had to do. On January 18th and we arrested them.

JUSTIN LING: Detective Dickinson and his team had McCarthy's apartment under surveillance. They already suspected him of killing Andrew and Selim when they saw him go inside with another man. Fearing that man's life was in danger, they made the decision to knock on McArthur's door and make the arrest. They found the man handcuffed to the bed against his will. In his sentencing the judge made it clear McArthur would have kept killing and more men would have gone missing.

MW: We've been listening to the CBC podcast Uncover: The Village. In our next half hour how the police and a community try to move on. If you've missed any of the podcasts or want to hear them again you can find uncover wherever you download your podcasts. I'm Megan Williams. You're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Uncover: The Village Ep.8

MW: Hi I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. We continue with the CBC podcast Uncover: The Village. Here's Justin ling with the rest of Episode 8, The Confession. And a warning, some listeners may find the details disturbing.

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JUSTIN LING: In light of the MacArthur investigation the city has created an independent review of how the police handle missing persons cases especially cases involving queer and racialized people. Haran is part of that.

HARAN: We need to hold the system accountable to find out what happened and why did it take so long.

JUSTIN LING: The review is headed up by a former judge. She will look at whether systemic bias tainted the investigation cases.

HARAN: And I know the police actually said turn around and say there are millions of dollars of resources put into project Houston and nothing came of it and no one knew what the chief had come on record that the community can step up etc. Well that's not the community's job. We can report things, and the fact that you had the report and still don't pay attention, there is a problem there. When you look at the individuals that are missing and the communities that they belong to you know some of them were precariously housed. Some of them didn't have status. All of them are poor or working poor. I think this review and our intention of working with the system is to create change that doesn't happen again. We can't lose more people like this especially in vulnerable communities.

JUSTIN LING: One thing that has hit home for me working on this story is how vulnerability can shift with time. The victims in the 1970s were gay men. Many of MacArthur's victims were queer men of colour, refugees and immigrants.

HARAN: We look at human rights and gay rights from a very privileged perspective. There's conversation around gay rights being so great that we can all live our lives and be who we are and that's great. But I think if you are someone who is out of the closet who happens to be white or [unintelliglbe]-gendered and is looking to get married I think that's when gay rights matter. We don't recognize that racialized people still experience racism in the queer community here at the LGBT community. Trans folks don't have the same amount of rights and securities as everyone else in the community.

JUSTIN LING: Members of the trans community faced disproportionate levels of violence. Canada has not published statistics on hate crimes targeting trans people. Until 2017, the federal government did not even officially recognized gender identity and gender expression as protected classes. But independent studies show a huge number of trans people have experienced violence because of their identity. Many have said that they would not report those assaults to police. One study found nearly one in four trans people reported being harassed by the police. This external review will be investigating a lot of police practices around the entire LGBTQ community. But that review is largely limited to Toronto police. There is something that could address bigger societal issues. A full blown public inquiry.

HARAN: And it's not the first serial killer situation that we've had. We've had Pickton.

NEWSCASTER: Robert Pickton was convicted of the murders of six women but was a suspect in the deaths of many more.

JUSTIN LING: Robert Pickton is Canada's most prolific serial killer. In 2010 the government of British Columbia ordered a public inquiry into the investigation of his murders.

NEWSCASTER: It lays most of the blame on police accusing them of blatant failure and much worse.

HARAN: After the RCMP did an inquiry they found that they could have found Pickton earlier if they had paid attention to say things, but because it was indigenous women, it was women who were addicted to substances or sex workers or any combination of that.

NEWSCASTER: There was systemic bias by the police.

HARAN: That's why no one paid really a whole lot of attention again in this situation. And it's very much the same.

JUSTIN LING: That inquiry led to sweeping recommendations on how police should deal with marginalized communities and how they should handle missing persons cases, most notably that police departments across the country set up dedicated Missing Persons units and make information about missing people available online. Police forces across the country adopted those recommendations. Toronto police ignored many of them. It wouldn't be until after the arrest of McArthur, more than five years after the Pickton report came out the Toronto police finally started a dedicated Missing Persons team. It's being headed up by Stacy Gallant who's also the head of the Cold Case Homicide Team.

STACY: We want to look at all the missing person investigations and make sure that they're all getting their due attention, make sure they're being worked on on a regular basis. We know we had some issues and that we have to bring things up and that we have to make some changes. So we're doing that actively. The review is going to be looking at historical things that we've done so hopefully we're going to be in a position that we can say we've looked internally at ourselves and said we've got to do things better and we've made some changes. And the review will see that and that will come out at that point in time.

JUSTIN LING: It's frustrating to watch tragedies repeat themselves. The failures in the Macarthur investigation where some of the same failures identified in the Pickton investigation. And these unsolved murders from the 70s, the demands for change and reform still rings so true. Over the course of reporting this story I came across another example one that looks so similar. One where police acknowledged their mistakes.

MICHAEL: Well I wasn't gay activist. And then along came HIV infection and we started dying off here in Montreal around.

JUSTIN LING: This is Michael Hendricks. He's a long time activist from Montreal in the early 90s. A wave of murders hit the city's queer community.

MICHAEL: All these people dying over the period of four years. We had 17 murders and the resolution rate was about 59 percent. The majority were found in their own bedroom. The reason that we got such support in our own community was not out of sympathy really. It was because of everything else the cops were doing while they were neglecting the murders. They were busy raiding both lesbian and gay bars.

JUSTIN LING: If you're struck by how similar that sounds to Toronto in the late 1970s it struck me too. But the similarities go beyond just the numbers.

MICHAEL: What we found most common was the murder itself. It was this phenomenon every single time we found it was over killing of the cadavers. The number of stab wounds in the bodies was remarkable. Also sometimes they'd been strangled and also stabbed. There was a lot of brutality in the bodies which would indicate us either homophobia or probably internalized homophobia but we couldn't tell.

JUSTIN LING: But by the 1990s Montreal's queer community was organized. The HIV AIDS crisis forced them to be.

MICHAEL: And we had the coffins already because we used them in our parades all the time and we would deposit the coffin at the police station or whatever and come pick it up later. Our leader whose name Roger LeClaire called a press conference and we were asking for a parliamentary committee to look into discrimination and violence against gays and lesbians in Quebec. Journalists were folding up their cameras and leaving and somebody popped the question 'Mr. LeClaire if they refuse to have public hearings what are you going to do?' Look looked at him and laughed and said 'If they refuse then there's nothing wrong'. So therefore we should celebrate our freedom so we will rent the stadium and we're going to invite all the homosexuals in Quebec to a big party to celebrate our liberation and we're going to start with the judges and the members of parliament.

JUSTIN LING: Just to get the subtext, what you were saying was if you don't call this inquiry we're going to out all the people in government, all the judges, all the senior officials who are standing by and ignoring the plight.

MICHAEL: All the homosexuals in government. We felt that the threat of outing not the actual outing was worth the effort. The government announced that they would never speak to us again. Two days later they called me and said would you be interested in meeting with the Human Rights Commission.

JUSTIN LING: the Human Rights Commission announced public hearings into discrimination and violence against LGBTQ people in Quebec. Even before the report came out. There was change.

MICHAEL: Three weeks after the hearings we got a call from the cops and they said Would you like come down there's been a gay murder come down to the homicide squad and we want to talk to you. And they presented us immediately with the photos, crime scene photos, and they start asking questions. What's that mean? What's that thing? What is this here? What do you read in this picture?

JUSTIN LING: The final report offered 14 recommendations on how to improve policing in the community. Everything from holding regular meetings with queer people to adopting clear province wide definitions on hate crimes. Michael says that overall they were implemented. Even still eight of those murders remain unsolved.

MICHAEL: One thing that puzzled us the most, why did they start in 1989 and why did they stop in 1993. I mean the volume went way down after we started investigating. We chose to think that it was our intervention that stopped it. That we notified the world that you can't murder gay people and get away with. We used to be able to. But I'm not so sure that's the reason.

JUSTIN LING: What could the other reason be?

MICHAEL: I don't know what I thought about it for 20 some years and I've never - 25 years - I've never been able to figure it out. There have been very few gay murders since then in Montreal.

JUSTIN LING: Back in Toronto it's been a year since Stacy Gallant and the Toronto Police cold case team have reopened cases going back to the 1970s.

STACY: I think there's a few cases that look promising at this point and we're working towards identifying the person responsible and if we get enough information that it might put us over the edge to lead towards an arrest.

JUSTIN LING: Gallant says they even managed to resolve one of the 23 cases.

MICHAEL: It was Dennis Joseph Colby who was 47 years old at the time. Happened in 1995.

JUSTIN LING: Dennis Joseph Colby was an openly gay former school board trustee who was beaten to death in his own home.

STACY: We sent in for analysis some of the evidence that we had at the time put that in for fingerprints DNA that sort of thing. The DNA then came back to identifying the person that we believed is responsible for the murder of Mr. Colby.

JUSTIN LING: It's not Bruce McArthur.

STACY: That person died in 2015. Had that person been alive today he would have been arrested and charged with the murder of Mr. Colby and put before the courts.

JUSTIN LING: Police aren't releasing the man's name because he's dead. So that leaves 22 outstanding cases.

STACY: We actually engaged specialists to look at all these cases. Also doing the analysis on McArthur's and trying to see if there was any correlation between the old cases and what we know about McArthur today. And you know those analysis were all done and there's been nothing jumping out from that perspective either.

JUSTIN LING: Has there been any cases like that where you're kind of saying you know, they were neighbours or they did, you know...?

STACY: Nothing. I can say there's at least eight of the cases he's been significantly ruled out. There is nothing within the case file itself or within the evidence that has any direct or circumstantial connection to Bruce McArthur. To say that he was involved or knew the victim of those murders. Even speaking to one former investigator who says that he always had a person in mind for one of these cases, the murder of Sandy LeBlanc specifically, saying that there is a guy by the name of [unintelligible] who had a hunch that this was the guy I forget his name because he was arrested fully three years later for another homicide against a gay man. We're still awaiting testing centre forensic sciences on that one but I do recall that they did have persons of interest in that case.

JUSTIN LING: Gallant won't say if one of those persons of interest is Fast Eddie. I tell him that Fast Eddie was also murdered.

STACY: So in that case what we will do is look for living relatives of the person. And if we could determine that and identify that person and get a consent sample from them that would be fantastic and we would have that process and analyze that Senator forensic sciences, or in some cases if the consent sample doesn't work and the person doesn't want to participate and assist with us then we have to deploy other means to try and obtain a sample to see whether or not it does make a connection.

JUSTIN LING: So if Fast Eddie did kill Sandy LeBlanc, even if they don't have his DNA on file, there's still a chance they could put it together. And what about the murders of Hal Walkley, Brian [unintelligible], Duncan Robinson.

STACY: Those three cases you mentioned have not yet been ruled out entirely. We still haven't got to the point where we have all the evidence back in terms of forensics if any exists or not. So we don't know that yet. There may be some that ultimately remain potentially related because we have no way to say either way that they're not.

JUSTIN LING: So some cases may sit in limbo possibly forever maybe related to McArthur. Maybe not. Until police get firm answers as to what happened to these men. Families will be left wondering that is if police ever get answers.

PRIEST: We hope that you again find the comfort you seek and recognize that there is no right or wrong way to grieve but that if you find your emotions being stirred up tonight this is again to be a safe place to shed our tears. Because eight men have died.

JUSTIN LING: Days after McArthur's sentencing the Metropolitan Community Church holds a vigil.

PRIEST: Senseless violence has been perpetrated on us and on them. People we know and care about are gone. And our safety too has been shattered. Violence has been perpetrated in our world. And micro aggressions happen even in our diverse city of Toronto every day. And nothing we do can change the past. And so we mourn.

JUSTIN LING: I spot Karen Fraser. There's police Chief Mark Saunders, inspector [unintelligible], detective Dickinson. The mayor is here too. There's a member of parliament, a city councillor nd a host of others from the community. Every Pew is full.

PRIEST: Before the serial killer was discovered in our midst people of racialized LGBTQ communities in our city of Toronto had been saying for a long time there was something up. Many of us weren't sure until the true horrors of this tragedy were uncovered. I am deeply deeply thankful for the hard work of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention for Iran vagina fan who is the executive director that we might empower and embolden our South Asian and Middle Eastern family and friends and ensure that all and I mean all are truly included in this loving community of ours. And so at this time I invite Ford Haran to offer a few words.

HARAN: I look at Skander Raj. I hear his story. I saw myself especially when I first moved here and knew no one else but my friends and had little to no connection to community organizations. Now if I went missing today with all of the privilege that I have I'm sure I would be found particularly. If I didn't have those connections, if I went missing would my friends filing a complaint to the police be heard as they too are people of colour or have little social status? Would my mother filing a complaint be heard because her English is poor? Would they assume it was an honour killing or I was sent back because I was a refugee or deported? Or would they just assume that it is the gay lifestyle that caused my disappearance and no attention is needed. The ill treatment of sex workers, those struggling with addictions, the homeless, refugees, newcomers, racialized folks, the working poor has devastating impacts on all of us. We will never get these men back but I hope that all of the families and friends can take some comfort in knowing that their loved ones have initiated change to better the city province and this country.

JUSTIN LING: The traditions of many of the lost men are represented in the service.

VOICE 1: [Indistinct speech]

VOICE 2: Good evening. And I greet you with the greeting of Islam. Salaam aleikum. Peace be with you. [Arabic speech]. In the rising of the sun and it's going down we remember them. In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter we remember them. In the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring we remember them. In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer we remember them. In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of Autumn we remember them.

DEENA: Hearts began to break when the first of the eight men we honour here tonight went missing.

JUSTIN LING: Reverend Deena Dudley speaks.

DEENA: And our hearts may be broken but we as individuals and a community, we are not broken. Hear me, people, we are not broken. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. Toronto and Toronto's LGBTQ community have suffered some utterly unfathomable blows in the past year. But we are strong. We have fought. For a long time just to be who we are. And we're not giving up. We have fought for our rights here in Canada and we continue to fight for the rights of LGBTQ people around the world. And we still have work to do but we are strong because no one loved is ever lost forever. Love is stronger than death.

JUSTIN LING: This ordeal has gone on for eight impossibly long years. But in a lot of ways it's been going on for decades and it's still going on. As long as the murders of Sandy LeBlanc, Duncan Robinson, Brian Latocki, Hal Walkley all of the men whose cold cases sit in a box in Toronto police headquarters as long as they go unsolved there isn't going to be a conclusion. As long as the murder of trans people continues there isn't going to be a conclusion. So if not a conclusion it is at least the end of a long sad chapter.

JEFF: I'm thankful for each and every one of you for being with us tonight.

JUSTIN LING: The final speaker is Reverend Jeff Rock. He became the senior pastor here after Brad hawks retired.

JEFF: I am thankful for these lives. For Skanderaj Navaratnam who is known as a fun loving man who he loves to dance with wild abandon especially to retro music. He worked as a hotel animator and here in Canada at a nursing home and he has a great sense of humour. I'm thankful for Andrew Kinsman. He's a community activist who works to fight homelessness and HIV AIDS. He's a gentle soul and he volunteers with the DPW Way Foundation. He has a cat whom he loves and has missed by many in Toronto's LGBTQ 2 plus community. I'm thankful for Celine Essen. He's known to us here at MC Toronto. He's attended worship a few times. His brothers said he thought, believed and felt and lived free as a bird. Beyond any borders and boundaries he wants to be a peer counsellor and help others. I'm thankful for Abdulbassir Faizi who was born and raised in Afghanistan. He has two daughters. He works hard. And is preparing for a vacation when he went missing. I'm thankful for Kerushna Kumar Kanagaratnam who came to Canada as an asylum seeker with hundreds of other Tamils from Sri Lanka on a cargo ship. It took three months to travel from Thailand to British Columbia. His refugee claim was denied. And his family thought he is in hiding. I'm thankful for Dean Lisowick who is in Toronto's Shelter System from time to time after a life in the province's foster care system. No missing persons report was written for him. Police believe he died sometime between May 2016 and July 2017. A 14 month period. I'm thankful for Serush Mahmudi. He likes camping and playing pool. For him life in Canada wasn't easy. But he did his best. I'm thankful for Majid Kayhan. He loves to sing Bollywood songs and he was known to dress in traditional Afghani garb and walk up and down Church Street with pride at his multiple identities. It is no secret that there is evil and darkness and shadows in our world. But the only way to overcome those shadows will be for us to share the light to commit to stand in solidarity with one another. To share the love and the light beyond the sanctuary into our world and make sure this never happens again. Friends as you go forth from the place, go knowing that love is better than anger. That hope is better than fear. That optimism is better than despair. And I would add that love is stronger than violence. That this community is stronger than the forces that would tear us apart. We are resilient. We are strong. We are full of love. And we will remember those we have lost. We will heal this hurts together. We will end misogyny and racism and homophobia and transphobia and bi phobia and Syrio-phobia and violence in our community and our world. And we will do it together. Amen.

[Song]

MW: That was episode 8 of Uncover: The Village. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. I'm Megan Williams. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Thursday July 4, 2019 Full Transcript

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