The Decibel - Sex abuse allegations at the Calgary Stampede

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

An ongoing class-action lawsuit against the Calgary Stampede alleges that for decades the organization did not properly protect children from a sexual predator.Carrie Tait is a reporter for The Globe���s Calgary bureau and she explains what’s behind the case.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

The Calgary Stampede is called the greatest outdoor show on earth. And for 10 days in July every year, more than a million people descend on the city for the rodeo, the party and exhibition. But behind the festivities, we've now learned about disturbing allegations. A class action lawsuit filed against the organization alleges a sexual predator preyed on children involved in the stampede for decades, and that the organization did little to stop it. Carrie Tate is a reporter for the Globe's Calgary Bureau, and she recently reported on court documents that reveal more of what went on. Today, she's here to explain. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Kerry, thank you so much for being back on the show. Hi, thanks for having me. So in order to understand what's going on with this lawsuit against the Calgary Stampede, I think we need to know a little bit about this group called the Young Canadians. Who are the Young Canadians, Carrie? The Young Canadians are really part of the heart of Stampede. A lot of what people think about of Stampede, of course, is the rodeo, but Stampede's mandate's really broad, and one of their key programs is to foster youth, and this is one of those premier programs. They're both a performing

arts school within Stampede for youth sort of around 8 to 21 years old. But what they're most known for is the grandstand show at the end of every day during Stampede, the festival, you know, the fair, the rodeo that everybody thinks about. It's this big, flashy, glitzy singing and dancing show with kids and there's gymnastics and lights and glitter and lots of happy hands, that kind of thing. You've got the invitation. You've got the right address. You need some medication. The answer's always yes.

A little chance encounter could be... It really is the part of the premiere show at Stampede. You cannot separate Stampede and the Young Canadians. They go together and they're a marquee show. Okay. So it sounds like this group is a pretty integral part of the Stampede experience then. Absolutely. And it's something Stampede is really, really proud of. They fostered their own homegrown talent show decades ago.

This was no longer did you need to import, you know, the song and dance troupe for your big exhibition. Alberta grew it itself. Calgary grew it itself. And it's the youth program, but it's also like to highlight Alberta talent. Okay. So all of this now brings us to Philip Harima. Who is he and how does he fit into all of this? So Philip Harima is both key to the story and not actually part of the lawsuit. So we have to keep those two things in mind. He was once a young Canadian himself back, I believe, in the 80s. And then, you know, once he aged out, he became a volunteer and then he became an employee within kind of the young Canadian Stampede family. For a long time, technically, his title was something like business administrator,

but he was, according to the court documents, integral to the operation of the Stampede. The boys in the troop looked up to him as a mentor. So he was both kind of on this cusp between adults and sort of the connection between the older boys, the teenagers. So he made this, through the court documents, really his own, right? Like he became a gatekeeper. The boys saw him as if you wanted a good role in the young Canadians, you know, up front and center in the spotlight or a lead singing and dancing role. You had to be on his good side. That's part of a kind of the toxic culture that the court documents describe. He was also this self-described or self-appointed physiotherapist, which gets into some of the

problems. And so he wore a lot of hats. Yeah. And just to be clear, the group is boys and girls, but we're focusing on the boys here. Yes. Okay. So Harima, he's a facilitator, but he also is taking on all of these other roles. I mean, can we unpack this? Like how does he, like you mentioned physiotherapy, how does he get into this? Well, he becomes part of the boys' lives. Like he also would reach out to them over text or messenger. And that's how, where we start to see the luring and the asking for photographs. The physiotherapy kind of massage, how he had the ability or right to do that is a little bit is never really clear. Although it is clear in the documents that there were people who were aware that this was a role he had taken on and would perform, you know, back rubs in a room without supervision. He was also somebody who would be involved in deciding who would go on a big trip, say to Disneyland. He was once the only

adult employee chaperone on a trip, that type of thing. So he was really, really integral. And the boys in the court documents argue they viewed him as the key to their success within the Young Canadians. So this is an individual, it sounds like, who has a lot of power in this organization and in the roles that he's taking on. I want to ask you directly about the court documents that we're referencing here, Carrie, because so these were filed last year and some of them talk about the allegations against Harima. And this goes back decades. So what do the documents say about what happened in the late 80s? So this is the group of former young Canadians who are suing the Stampede, arguing that they should have known or did know that Harima was abusing them or in a position to be exploiting them. So Harima is in prison right now.

His trial happened and this lawsuit was first filed in 2017. So sort of concurrent with the trial. So what this says about Harima is the earliest documented incident that Stampede may have been aware of was in 1988. A former young Canadian in the court documents he's known as R.S. went to who was then the executive, one of the top executives with the young Canadians at a house party and told the executive that Harima abused him. And he had also told a friend at the time, he gives quite a detailed account in the court documents, how it started, where it happened, you know, the details of the incident are quite explicit. So the allegation is that a senior Stampede official was aware as early as 1988 that Harima had an inappropriate relationship

with a young Canadian and was warned by that person that he should not be around children. And what comes of this? So this kid reports it to an official with the organization. What happens? Absolutely nothing. According to the court documents, the person, RS, says in the court documents that he was told your future with the young Canadians could be in peril, making those types of accusations, and he dropped it. So just to be clear, the kid is reporting to someone in power at the organization, he's told this is you can't be making serious allegations like this and be part of the group.

He's reporting to the top executive within the Young Canadians at that time. Wow. OK, so that was in the late 80s. When do things kind of surface again? So then we fast forward to 2008. There's nothing in the court documents that we can see publicly until 2008. So that's 20 years. 20 years. with the young Canadian. So another adult, an instructor, an authority figure, talks about how she, you know, spoke with others within the organization about her concerns over Harima and was told to write a formal complaint. So she did. And the formal complaint is part of the court record. So we can see this email, this letter that she submitted to, again, top officials within Young Canadian Stampede Organization detailing her concerns about Harima.

She's even specific saying, you know, she names their names are redacted in the documents. But two of the boys that she's saying her and another instructor watched in a closed room, kind of waiting for them to come out because they were with Harima and they were worried about the boys. She warns that we may not fully know what's going on. She talks about the inappropriate relationships. She doesn't go as far to make an accusation of sexual exploitation or something like that, but she does talk about what she feels is his

inappropriate relationship. And this warning, it's so explicit that she believes that there may be something more going on. So we have this document in 2008. She follows up on the email. She doesn't hear back. So she follows up. Then she does get a reply saying yep yep got it you know about a day or two later we see emails within the again sort of the top people in this organization meeting or planning to meet about harima it doesn't necessarily then reference back to her formal complaint but it talks about the wake around harima it shows that they're aware that he has inappropriate relationships with the boys. But then again, we see nothing. We don't really know what comes of that. Really? Okay. So we see this kind of flurry of activity maybe around him in 2008,

but nothing really happens then. Right. So nothing happens that we see in the court documents, to be clear, like there may have been other things happening. But then in early 2014, the first boy that we know of goes to police. And that's when Stampede then talks about how they did, you know, quickly remove him and launched their own investigation and that type of thing. But it took this boy in 2014 to trigger something. Now, one, at least one, and perhaps two of the boys who are part of this lawsuit talk about being mentioned by name in the letter in 2008 and how, you know, it's upsetting to them that there was an adult aware specifically about their case and

how if somebody had interjected, perhaps they could have been spared. And that's the heart of this lawsuit is that, you know, arguing that the boys weren't protected. But if they had stepped in 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, some of the boys who are currently in it may not have ended up in that position. Yeah. And we're going to get into the details of the lawsuit just in a second. But I guess I just want to be clear. 2014, Harima does resign then. Can you just walk us through what happens at that point? You know, resign, fired. There's a bit of a gray area. And you can sort of see he, he in the court documents, you can see that he recognizes he's in big trouble. He's aware,

you know, he's, he's, the court documents show him expressing a nervousness. Like if you say anything about X, Y, Z, I'm going to be in big trouble. It all does really happen quite quickly when the police get involved. And then he ends up in trial in 2018. Some of the victims testify and then trial stops. He's pleaded guilty and he's sentenced to 10 years and he's in prison now. We'll be right back. Okay, so Philip Harima is in jail, but now there's this class action lawsuit against the Calgary Stampede. And so this gets back to the court documents that we've been talking about earlier, they were filed as a part of this lawsuit. So, so Carrie, let's get into some details. Tell me about this class action lawsuit. So the class action lawsuit covers people who would have been affected by his actions,

which given that this is a span of 30 years, that's quite a few boys and teenagers. And there are varying degrees of victims and alleged victims. Some people suffered from the toxic culture, and then some of the people claim allegations of sexual exploitation or sexual assault, luring. The lawyers have told me there's about two to three dozen victims and alleged victims there. We don't have to get into specifics, but can you give us a sense of what are some of the allegations here? Like, let's go back to RS, the fellow from 1988. He's quite explicit that it was sexual assault.

There's descriptions in the court documents of masturbation, oral sex. There's descriptions in the court documents and some of what Harima has been convicted of, of luring photographs. He would be exchanging messages with them on iMessage or Facebook, those types of venues and ask for photographs or have them do pushups in front of him. So it runs right from sexual assault to photographs, I think, when you look at the sexual exploitation spectrum. So one thing is to keep in mind that the allegations in the lawsuit, the fresh ones, those have not been tested in court, even though they have reached a partial settlement. These are still unproven. Now, some of those allegations in the lawsuit against Stampede actually have been proven because those were part of the lawsuit against Harima. But it is important that these are untested. So again, just to be clear, so this is a lawsuit that is brought against the Calgary Stampede.

I know we talked about this a little bit, but can we just flesh that out again? So what exactly is this lawsuit saying? So the lawsuit is saying that Stampede failed to protect youth. It's also saying not only did it fail to protect the youth, but given that, it should pay for the victims and the alleged victims sort of in a way of the bills that one would incur, like there's psychologist bills, psychiatric costs, and then, of course, damages that we see in these types of lawsuits. And that's where we are now. OK, and a partial settlement was reached in this lawsuit. We don't know the exact amount yet, but why has the Stampede agreed to pay the damages in this case? This is the big question. This case has been going on for seven years. And as recently as June,

when the Globe and Mail wrote the story revealing these new allegations, it was the stampede was saying, no, you know, that was not our responsibility. We didn't know what he was doing. We took correct action. They submitted, you know, hundreds of pages of documents explaining their process. And they were fighting it. And then they had a date with a judge on a summary judgment. And what seems to have been a surprise is Stampede had then said, OK, actually, we are responsible for the liability. They didn't take responsibility for what had happened, but they've taken responsibility to pay for the liability. Now, this doesn't mean that this is over. It means they've agreed to this.

They're still negotiating over what those costs look like. I want to go back to a detail you mentioned there. You said that Stampede does not accept responsibility, but they accept responsibility for liability. So what exactly does that mean? Well, that's the, you know, the legal wrangling. Stampede has agreed to pay 100% of the costs, whether those are agreed upon or awarded by a judge, you know, whether they are told to pay or whether they actually do reach a negotiated settlement. Stampede has agreed to pay, and that is a big, big step forward. Okay. It's interesting. I think some people's minds might go to Hockey Canada, that situation we've been talking about for the last year in particular. I wonder, do you see any similarities Any similarities here? Yes and no. This is more the youth being the alleged victims.

So there's definitely an oversight problem that those parallels are absolutely there. But the perpetrator and the victims in this case are between the two cases are not quite the same. The question becomes, and that we're seeing as this now starts to become a political football, is, is this an organization that should be deserving of public money? And yeah, let's talk about the politics of it, because this is an organization that gets federal funding, right? What kind of money are we talking about? Stampede's a not-for-profit. It gets funding at a federal level, provincial level, from the city. From the feds, you have to think of it more as like infrastructure grants. It tends to be a big one. So Stampede is many things, right? It is the 10-day festival, but it also hosts conferences,

and there's buildings and all of that that goes into it. So, you know, one of the most recent big bills that the federal government has been in is like a four million dollar commitment on a new building over X number of years. But it also, you know, helped bailed out Stampede during COVID with wage subsidies. It helped with the summer jobs grant for youth employment, subsidies there. But it's not just the pieces of infrastructure that we can touch. A lot of it is intangible. The Stampede brings millions of dollars in tourism and economic benefit to Calgary. And part of that is because every politician in the country wants to be seen there. It's not just the prime minister flipping pancakes.

It's the prime minister and 10 cabinet ministers, no matter where they're from. It's the premier and every MLA. And so even that brings benefit, that intangible advertising that comes along with it and that support. Yeah. Well, yeah. So it sounds like from what you're saying, like Stampede is important to politicians. And when we are talking about politics, we're talking about this money. It's relevant to mention there is a call from a Calgary area liberal MP, George Chahal, to stop federal funding to the Stampede. Why is he asking for that? He's arguing that, you know, Stampede is sort of whitewashing and that the Stampede. Why is he asking for that? He's arguing that, you know, Stampede is sort of

whitewashing and that the Stampede should not receive federal funding until, you know, the victims are content. This is a tricky one because the court case is still ongoing. The settlement, as I mentioned, is not a done deal. The Conservatives, one of the local Conservatives has accused him of grandstanding. So that has turned into its own political debate. On the provincial side, the provincial government's been very clear that they will continue to fund Stampede. Premier Daniel Smith has talked about how she's asked Stampede for an update on its protocols to protect children. Now, this is actually really, really important to this, because it's not as though Stampede lacked protocols in those 30 years. The difference is

whether those protocols are being followed and enforced. So sure, they have new protocols, but Stampede had protocols in the past. The protocols don't protect children, the enforcement does. Just to end here, Carrie, what kind of impact will this lawsuit, and I guess the situation broadly, but in particular this lawsuit against the organization, what impact will that have on Stampede moving forward? It's pretty tricky to say. Stampede is absolutely resilient. It is a key part of Calgary's social, political, cultural fabric. The young Canadians are not going to disappear. Perhaps it brings more awareness to organizations where children could be at risk. The danger is that people see this as something that is just historical when really it was not that long ago and it ran for 30 years. So perhaps people recognize that harm and that potential harm, but it is not as though this is something that brings down the biggest festival in Alberta's history. Carrie, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Thank you for having me.

That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wells. Our summer producer is Nagi Nia. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.