Uncover - S22 E1: The Gun | "The Band Played On"

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

It's the summer of 1985. Peter Hamer is a typical, goofy teenager partying with his friends. They're drinking beer and coolers. Then he invites his music teacher to join them, with sinister intentions. Thirty-three years later, Hamer returns to his high school band room to explain what happened next. Listener discretion is advised.

I distinctly remember hearing someone yell, stop that van. From CBC Podcasts, an investigation into how young men are being recruited and radicalized on the internet. And she asked me if I was friends with a guy named Alec Manassian. By a new supercharged form of hate. On Facebook, police say he wrote the incel rebellion has already begun. A dark online subculture that's spilling over into the real world. Boys Like Me, available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Just a quick note before we begin. You're going to be hearing victims of

sexual abuse share some disturbing details. It can be difficult to listen to. This podcast is not intended for young audiences, and it contains explicit language. If you find these stories affect you, please reach out to a mental health professional for help. It was towards the end of the summer, I was having a party for the staff that I had worked with. It was a nice summer night. We had enough booze, and nobody was doing any kind of the summer, I was having a party for the staff that I had worked with. It was a nice summer night. We had enough booze and nobody was doing any kind of drugs back then. But it was always beer and coolers. And it was fun.

It's 1985. Peter Hamer is 17. My parents were in England. So naturally, he's having a party. Peter's a cute kid with his wavy mullet and the dimple on his chin. He's wearing what he always wore. Desert boots, wool work socks, jeans, and either a white or a black t-shirt. If it was anything other than a white or black t-shirt, it was a t-shirt with the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd on it.

That's what I wore. So he's the kind of guy that prefers Pink Floyd over Corey Hart. He has some good friends, but he's not exactly part of the popular crowd. Not a jock, not a brain, a band geek. On this summer night at his parents' suburban split-level home, Peter's drunk, and so are most of his friends. I had this friend who lived across the street, and Tom was a significant shit disturber.

That friend you have that tries to get you to do all of the bad things you ever did when you were in high school. So he had suggested, you know, we should get Bob over here. Bob Clark, his high school music teacher. music teacher. So we'd phoned his house and I, if I remember correctly, Tom, my neighbor had said, you know, it's a party. Why don't you come to the party? There's boys. There's all sorts of people here.

It's a good opportunity. And he showed up. So it's the middle of the night. Teenagers are drinking and a teacher shows up at the party. Some people left when they saw Bob Clark show up, and they're like, this is weird, I don't know why your teacher's here. Clark comes in the front door and into the living room. He came in and he's like, all right, you know, like, where's the action kind of stuff. Years of confusion and anger come to a head.

Drunk and now in a rage, something inside Peter snaps. So I went downstairs and I got my dad's 12-gauge shotgun. And I brought it upstairs. He was sitting on the couch and I pointed the gun at his head. couch and I pointed the gun at his head. I'm Julie Ireton. Over the course of five decades, dozens of students, including Peter Hamer, were abused by their teachers. Victims were teen boys and girls. Many attended the same public school in a sleepy Canadian suburb. Warnings were ignored. Authorities didn't act. And the band played on. This is a podcast from CBC Ottawa. What did I miss? That's what I said. What did I miss? He had a room where he could see out

and a room where no one could see in. I knew there was something wrong with him. Was it my fault? Did I seduce him? Did I make him do this? That kind of thing. And now all of a sudden, here's this guy who's gone, hey, kid, don't worry about it. You're special. This is not a whodunit.

This is an investigation that seeks to uncover long-held secrets and expose cover-ups. It's a unique story, but the themes are universal. Through this journey, victims will face the gut-wrenching challenges of moving past years of guilt and shame as they seek justice and accountability. This is Episode 1, The Gun. When you dredge the stuff up, it's emotional. And it'll always be emotional. You're never going to get away from that. Peter Hamer is a fit 51. He runs marathons and teaches martial arts. He's married with two kids, and he's the executive director of a health centre.

His black T-shirts and the tattoos up both arms give Peter a hipster vibe. His grain beard hides his teenage dimples. He looks confident, but sometimes Peter feels like he's dying inside. I still get upset when I talk about it, and I'm great every day. We're outside Peter's old high school, Bell High. It sits at the top of a hill. There's a sprawling lawn in front of the school and a forest out back. There are no sidewalks on the street and no convenience

stores to even walk to. It really feels like it's in the middle of nowhere. The music room is off to one end, away from the main part of the school. How long since you were here? 33 years. It's been 33 years since I've been inside the school. I've driven by it a lot, but I haven't been in it. I'm nervous about that. It's spring concert night at Bell, and the school is open to the public. I can hear them practicing.

Yeah. I want to go in that. Lead on. Yeah. This is the door that to go in that. Okay, lead on. Yeah, this was this is the door that I came in and out of all the time. And it is open. Okay, so tell me where are we? So that's the, so that the door to the basement was where the drama room was. The music room is just down here. Peter looks distracted, anxious. It looks like a storeroom back there, but it wasn't a storeroom before. That's where Bob's office was.

It's funny how shaky I feel right now. Yeah. When I had mentioned the idea of coming here, popping into the school's back door while the band was practicing, Peter was up for it. Now I'm not so sure. It's really weird.

I'm sorry. It's just strange being here. We won't stay long. Yeah. No, I mean, it's okay. I'm wondering if it was a bad idea to come here to stir up these memories. I suggest we step back outside for some fresh air. Big step.

It is. Do you regret? No, not at all. I needed to, I really, really needed to come back here. I dream about this place probably weekly. Really? Yeah, I... Sorry.

It's... It's in my dreams. Yeah. And, um... Certainly more so over the past couple of years but I used to dream about it I used to dream about being

in the hallways and maybe it's just that there was nothing I have no good memories of high school there was nothing that I could pinpoint and say yeah that was fun or that was great pinpoint and say, yeah, that was fun or that was great. Everything that was supposed to be good was tainted by Bob Clark's behavior. And so maybe there were good times, but I don't remember them. I remember all the crappy

things that happened. Those crappy things started as far back as the early 1980s, when Peter was in grade 9. I was one of those sort of mediocre high school students. You know, your quintessential middle child. You know, I had what I thought was an overachieving older sister and a really smart younger brother, and I sort of found that I sat in the middle. At first, Peter enjoyed music. He learned to play the clarinet.

Bob Clark had already been teaching for 15 years by the time Peter met him. And he was a popular teacher. He was the guy that everybody liked, if you were in music. I was never the popular kid in school. And being in band, the way people got along, they were my people. You know, they were comfortable.

They were, you know, I wasn't particularly good at playing any instrument, but it was accepting. And as odd as this may sound, like Bob Clark was a pretty inclusive kind of guy. So band became Peter's thing, a central part of his social life at high school. And Bob Clark's bands were legendary. For years, Clark led one of the best high school ensembles in the city. Clark's bands played packed shows, won awards. They cut vinyl records like this one. He moved. He was enthusiastic. He would become sweaty.

You could tell that that's where he thrived professionally. It was fun to watch. It was almost comical to watch sometimes. It was an absolute passion that he had. You know, there are people that have gone on to be exceptionally successful in the music world because of whatever seed that he planted and the education he gave them. So Clark turned kids who could hardly even read a note into talented band members. It seemed he really cared about his students. He tutored some of them after school and in his home. He identified with the kids, you know, so you're, you're awkward, uncomfortable

15 year old kid who doesn't know what they're doing. Um, you know, doesn't know much about themselves, their body and, you know, how they're developing. And, um, and he was on the same level, you know, uh, you know, cause he was, know, because he had a coolness to him. He would ask for a hug, like in class after band, you know, my back hurts, I could really use a hug. He would talk about, you know, I'm really tired, when I'm tired I'm horny. He would talk about, you know, I'm really tired. When I'm tired, I'm horny. Those kind of things were constant conversations.

He'd make comments about your body, and he'd go, oh, look, you know, I can see your nipples through your shirt. You must be horny. And he would always make jokes that in today's society would be considered inappropriate. Do you remember, like, what exactly, to give me an example? So I don't remember what grade it is, but I specifically remember it because I remember thinking, this is insane why he's saying this. So he was up in front of a class and he was talking about playing the guitar. And he said to everybody, guitars are very phallic. And he says one hand

is going up and down the frets as if he's stroking somebody's penis. And the other hand is, is, you know, like playing with the person's balls. That was the stuff that came out of his mouth. It all made Peter uncomfortable. Yet back then he was a teenager, so he laughed. He brushed it off. But it wore Peter down. Bob Clark's sexually charged, vulgar comments became unrelenting. In music class, at band practice, on band trips. Constant, every day. And then he wants to, you know grab you and um which always made it like just that one step more and sometimes he did grab peter remembers countless sexual come-ons and when peter was just 16 clark took him to a porn shop then groped him on the way home

put his hand on my leg and and he would say you know what would you do if I went a little higher and what would you do if you know. And then there was the time Clark asked Peter to come over to help fix his bathroom floor. Came in and he was talking to me and he sat down on the on the floor his back was leaning against the against the counter and his pants were at his knees, and he was playing with himself. And he was asking me, you know, come and touch it, you know. Can I touch yours? You know, what if I just sat here and stroked myself?

Why don't you come, you know, just grab it? And a couple days later in school, he called me into the back room, and he asked me if I was going to keep his secrets. And I said, I'm not saying anything to anybody. It was such a horrible place for me in my head. And then there was the music room, Bob Clark's domain. Behind that room here at Bell High, there's a small back office. The little room is where he would take people to do their music tests.

We walk past the music stands and chairs. Peter is back in grade 10. Right now there's an organ and a desk in here, but it used to be just a table. So you'd sit on one side of the table, you'd be on the other side of the table, or you'd stand with a music stand, and you'd have to play. Everybody's in the classroom, and you had to go into the back with your musical instrument, and you would have to play a solo for him. I had asked him, I was such a mediocre clarinet player, I said like

can't there be a better way of getting a mark? Isn't there any way that you can grade me instead of having me play a solo because I'm like you know my hands are shaking this is terrifying and and he said yes if you would let me take pictures of you naked, you don't have to play, and you'll get a good mark. Take your clothes off and let me have pictures. And I said no. It's ridiculous. I hear the class coming.

Yeah. Have you seen enough? Yeah, I've seen enough. I think I want to go home now. All right, let's go. And there are others with memories of that back office. How many times I was in his office, like after hours for detention,

being in the practice room. Like that's got to be haunted, that fucking place. Do you know what I mean? Like I don't know why they haven't bulldozed it or whatever, closed it forever. That is a place where innocence was murdered. My name is John Cody. That's my professional name, but my Christian name is Jean-Marc Chiron.

That would have been the name on Bob Clark's class list. He attended Bell High School before Peter Hamer. Try not to blow on your face. Cody takes a long drag on his cigarette, then a sip of coffee. We're in his small one-bedroom apartment in Montreal. With Root Beer the Wonder Cat. She's elegant. She's in charge.

Yes, she is. Don't forget it. John Cody may not be a household name, but he's a big deal in music. He's often worked behind the scenes. He's even shared a stage with Joni Mitchell. A lot of people go, oh, that's so cool, she's introducing you. And I knew her. We did sing together. I see a record there of Bonnie Raitt and Tom Cochran.

Those are my two American Gold records. It was Tom and Kathy Cochran who gave me John Cody. His stage name, which became his name. I'd written on a song. This was when Life is a Highway was written. Cody sings back up there and wrote a song on that album. And that started my career, really. So you go, like, here's what are my loopies.

I call them loopies. They're called loops. Cody is sitting in front of an electric piano, and a big monitor is showing a multi-track recording. After years of making music in LA, Cody moved back to Canada four years ago. His dad was dying of cancer and he had his own health problems. That's how it starts. I love that. Well, it's kind of weak. The past few years have been really tough for John Cody. A neurodegenerative disease recently forced him into the motorized wheelchair he's sitting in, moving to the music. And guitar. He had cancer of the larynx.

Doctors told him they'd have to remove vocal cords, which is a devastating diagnosis for a singer. But up at that keyboard, he's still in his element. Bass, guitar, in unison, boom. So you get the idea. I try all the time to sing, but if I sing like that, I can control the note and I can sing it in pitch. But if I try to sing like normal, like it's not a good sound. Long before the awards, the albums, the health problems, John Cody was a student at Bell High. He started in 1977, seven years before Peter Hamer. Cody was younger than the other kids in his class because he'd skipped a grade.

His yearbook photo shows a boy with wavy brown hair and full, almost pouty lips. He played the sax in Bob Clark's band. the sax in Bob Clark's band. Can you, um, I don't know how far you want, how far down the road you want to go, but can you tell me what was happening to you with your teacher? Well, the thing about him is, it's funny because all I can remember,

the only thing I remember about him was bat. He was in 10th grade when the abuse began. The only thing I can remember about him is sexual innuendo. And the unrelenting attention, just like Peter. Stalking the halls, the lunchroom. It's like a drunk person that you can't get rid of. That's what it feels like. It just feels like he was stalking,

constantly lurking and leering. And, you know, if you saw him coming up the hall, you would go the other way. But then there were times he couldn't escape, like in that back office in the music room. I don't even remember sitting in there. I just ran like, I was locked in there. I remember the date. I got it down. March 19, 1979. I don't want to remember. I don't. I remember the pants. I remember the shirt. I remember the belt.

I remember the face. Cody also remembers the teacher saying, I can orgasm without ejaculating. I don't remember how I got on my knees. Do I have to? And I seem to remember it was dark, but there was no window to outside in that room. You could turn off the light. There were no windows to the outside in his office. And it looks, you know what, honestly, it was the perfect setup. I mean, he had control. He had a room that locked. He had a room where he could see out into the classroom, and a room where no one could see in. For John Cody, the impact of the abuse was profound.

It fucked up my youth, there's no question. And there was a change in his behavior. It's like, that's what kids do when they're upset, they just act out. And you think they're just being a pain in the ass but something's wrong and I wish someone had noticed it's funny because one of the things that I resent the most about this entire situation is seeing that face and that means the teacher's face and when I think back to then it was to the back of my mind all the time.

Four decades later he still refuses to utter the name Bob Clark and long after John Cody left high school what the teacher had done to him continued to affect his life, even after his career took off in the 1980s. I was wild. It was a heady life, you know. I mean, I was playing music, I was in bars, I was too young to drink in, DJing and performing

and all kinds of things. And so I was just busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. But my sexual activity was really off the charts. And I think that I'm lucky for that time. I'm lucky I didn't get sick. I mean, AIDS. I wonder a lot about my lack of self-protection. You know, when your innocence is fucked with and you don't even know what it is,

you don't know what you're giving away. You don't know that you're giving away anything. It's obvious to me now why I dive Bob so badly. And if not for music, I would have been one of those horror stories. If not for music, he wouldn't have met Bob Clark. met Bob Clark. We take a break and John Cody wheels across his apartment to grab a soda.

Did that make a noise? Yeah, when it turns on. And look, it's like if you want a back up, you go You're like a dump truck. I know. I look like one too. And look, it's like if you want a back up, you go... You're like a dump truck. I know. I look like one too. The only way I know, by the way, to deal is to make jokes.

Because my coping mechanism has always been humor. John Cody's humor also makes him a likable guy. Someone easy to spend a few hours with without even noticing. Like so many men who were abused as teens or kids, Cody put the experience away. It's like he stored it in a box at the back of a shelf. Then he got on with his life and he pretended it didn't exist, it didn't matter. But that box recently split open, and the contents spilled out. Now, well into his 50s, he finds he just can't hide it away anymore. Again and again, people knew and did nothing. And I did what I thought was my due diligence,

and nobody did theirs. And there's probably nothing more frustrating to me about life than that. John Cody was still in high school in the late 1970s. He says back then, he told two teachers Bob Clark was doing and saying sexual things to students, including him. The teacher said they knew about Clark and that the music teacher had already been spoken to. But Cody says that wasn't good enough. He thinks police should have been called.

It should have been done when I talked to those teachers about it. And it should have been done for a lot of fucking kids. They knew, they knew, they knew, they knew. And I knew, they knew. I told teachers too. Why are we discussing this 40 fucking years later? It's 40 years. And in that time, more students, including Peter Hamer, were preyed upon.

For years, Peter also endured Clark's abuse. And then in 1985, Peter made a decision. He would deal with the situation himself. That's when he stared at Bob Clark down the barrel of a gun. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell.

I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. I was livid because he came in and he's like, all right, you know, like, where's the action kind of stuff. Bob Clark was at Peter's house. That summer party with a bunch of teens. So I went downstairs and I got my dad's 12-gauge shotgun. Peter had that mullet and a desperate secret.

He'd put up with two and a half years of abuse from his music teacher. He was sitting on the couch, and I pointed the gun at his head. Clearly he was scared, because he was just sitting there. He wasn't saying much. He just stared at me. So my sister and her boyfriend at the time had come home and she saw me. So he was holding one of the shotguns on Clark, and Clark was standing there, which struck me as so odd on so many levels.

Nicola Hamer is Peter's older sister. She also remembers that night. She just comes up to me and she's like, Peter, you're being an idiot, and she took the gun away from me. And so I just literally yanked the gun out of his hand, like, you're so stupid. Why are you doing this? You know, and he ran off. And I thought, I'll just go get the next gun.

So I went downstairs to the basement, and it was a.22 caliber rifle. And I brought that back up and continued to threaten him. And don't ask me why he didn't leave at that point but he didn't leave and and was threatening him yeah he was threatening him with the gun and Clark was standing there going look I don't want any trouble this is you know don't be crazy kind of thing I don't have any real recollection of what he had to say the only thing that stuck in my mind is I don't know what you're talking about, which I thought was strange, because I'm like, you know what I'm talking about. And I turned to Clark and I yelled,

why are you still here? You know, I couldn't, I said, what are you doing here? Go away. And then he did, he turned around and he left. At the time, Nicola didn't know what was going on between Peter and his teacher. I knew Clark was a sleaze.

I had no idea the extent of it. And I didn't even ask. Peter was desperately worried about their younger brother, Alex. He was about to head to Bell High. younger brother Alex. He was about to head to Bell High. My brother was going to start grade 9 after I finished grade 12. And I was worried that he would be a victim.

That's why he had grabbed the guns. And I had said, you know, my brother's going to be going to school in a year, and if you touch him, I'll kill you. Like, if you ever touch my brother, I'll fucking kill you. You know, this kind of thing. Peter had threatened to kill his teacher. He had held a gun, two guns, to Bob Clark's head.

My absolute fear at the time was that it was going to be me that would be arrested. And that carried with me for years. There's no way I can say anything because what I've done is worse. You know, I threatened somebody. It was an unloaded gun, but I still made him very afraid. And I I couldn't tell anybody. I couldn't tell anybody. Months went by, and Peter's head was still a mess. He finally confided in another teacher about what Bob Clark had been doing.

And he said, you need to have a conversation with the administration of the school. And I said, I wasn't interested. And he told me I absolutely needed to escalate this. So he set up a meeting with Mr. Carroll, who was the principal of the school, and I went and sat with Mr. Carroll and told him some of what had happened. Peter told Bell High School principal Pat Carroll about the hugs.

I told him about... The vulgar innuendo, the request for naked photos. That he had wanted to take pictures of me in the back room. And I remember Carroll saying, what do you want me to do? So this teenager was asked, what do you want me to do? And at that point, really what I wanted him to do was make sure that he couldn't get my brother. And so I said, I just don't want him here. I don't want my brother to be a victim.

That was the driving force for me. And he said, OK, that's the last we talked about it. That's the last I talked about it with anybody. Bob Clark left Bell High School at the end of the school year in 1986. And at the time, all Peter knew was he was gone. And he wouldn't lay a hand on his younger brother. So I felt like, you know, OK, I'd done my job. And you feel like you're the only one.

Decades went by. Then Peter did what he had been thinking about doing for 30 years. He went to the police. And charges were laid. ...wall from the CBC Ottawa newsroom. A former teacher from Morrisburg has been charged with groping one of his male students in Ottawa back in the 1980s. Ottawa police have charged 72-year-old Robert Clark with sexual assault. For the 33 years of pain that he's caused me, I need to have him charged.

He's scheduled to appear in court next month. Investigators say there could be more victims. More victims do come forward, several more. Eight men go to police and charges are laid. The allegations against Bob Clark date back to the early 1970s and into the 1990s, long before Peter Hamer and long after. Eventually, a court date is set and victims start to prepare. I want him to be alive to to be held accountable.

Peter worries as he waits to face Bob Clark in court. Let him not have the guts to take his own life. But Peter's looking for accountability beyond the justice system. You know what happened happened. Let's figure out you know why it was allowed to happen for as long as it was allowed to happen. I'm just desperate to find out. Peter's sister, Nicola Hamer, arrives with research material. Okay, so what's in this pile here? Six years of Bell High School yearbooks from the years of spanning the years that we were there. The yearbooks are dog-eared and dusty but they show who was in charge over the years.

Peter's elderly family dog Elvis wanders around the room. That dog has quite a clump. He's got congestive heart failure. We give Elvis a pat and we get back to the yearbooks. Peter thinks some of the answers lie with the school board. Clark's former employer. All Peter knows is Bob Clark left teaching in 1992. There were rumors he was forced to leave. All Peter knows is Bob Clark left teaching in 1992.

There were rumours he was forced to leave. My own requests to the school board for information go unanswered. My assumption is that each employee of the school board has a file attached to them. If there are complaints, then they go into the file. And there were complaints. Peter had complained to his principal in 1986, and he wants to know how many other school authorities knew about what Clark was doing. The focus for me now is why. You know, it's the why.

Why was he allowed to continue teaching? Bob Clark was, you know, he was obviously the main perpetrator, but there were more. And there are more people out there that I think, to an extent, could easily be considered just as guilty because they allowed it. And the culpability is just as serious, I think, as the actual crime. I can comprehend where Clark comes from. He's screwed up, deeply screwed up, and he has terrible urges or had terrible urges, and he didn't reign them in

in an appropriate manner like an adult should do. But he had, but I understand that he had these demons inside him. I don't understand why a principal whose job is to look after the students would help a monster, be a monster. And so for me, in some ways, these people are more culpable. And I'm just really angry. And so I want their names out. I want people to know that they're at fault.

And clearly I'm not the only one who feels this way, right? This investigation is bigger than Bob Clark. Clark isn't the only teacher in this story. There are two others, men who worked at the same school, Bell High. One of the other teachers is Don Grenham. He coached basketball and led the team to championship wins. He got away with it because he produced success, and they liked that. The coach was accused of more than 55 crimes involving 22 students.

And another Bell High School music teacher, a man named Tim Stanitz, was also charged with sexual assault around the same time. There are more dark secrets at Bell High School. Secrets kept for years. Three teachers, dozens of victims. I uncover complaints that go all the way back to 1968 and they don't end until 2005. We have our own little mini Catholic church thing going on here. They were protecting these guys. And it seems like everywhere you turn, you find this sort of thing. And I don't even care that it was 20 years and 30 years ago.

I feel like people need to know what was actually going on. Bob Clark and Don Grenham worked down the hall from each other at Bell High. So what really what I'm, I'm trying to figure out, and, and this is why I want to track down other teachers and principals, vice principals if I can, is the connections between these guys, right? Yes. I mean, they worked under similar principals, like, or at the same time. I take the yearbooks back to my office and flip through the pages. I'm looking for the faces that go with the victims' names. These are names that appear on an official police charge sheet. On the charge sheet for Don Grenham, there's one name I recognize, Franz Glauss. And according to the police, he was a victim of the basketball coach.

But I know from looking at the yearbooks, he also played lead trumpet in Bob Clark's band. In his yearbook photo, he has glasses and dark hair. Clark's band. In his yearbook photo, he has glasses and dark hair. Franz Klaus shows up in the pictures on the vinyl album the band cut in the late 1970s. He told police he was abused by the coach. I need to find that boy, now a man in his 50s. Could Franz Klaus have been victimized by both teachers? Can you hear me okay? I hear you fine. Okay. I'm going to get in my car so that I can avoid any and all breeze.

Okay, so tell me your name, though, so I make sure I get the proper pronunciation. My name is Franz Glauss. On the next episode, we learn more about the basketball coach. So this guy's a real perv. And everybody loves Gretem. All the teachers think he's great. The whole school reveres the man.

I mean, I guess part of you is thinking, well, it's just for fun and kicks. So I said, the men have to go. And if you don't do anything about it, I'm going to go further. I'm not going to let it go. And then it became something of just nightmare proportions. It's bigger than they ever imagined. That becomes clearer as more victims come forward. The band Played On is reported and hosted by me, Julie Ireton. The podcast is written by me and Kristen Nelson. Kristen is also the series producer and sound editor. Chris Oak is our story editor.

Jennifer Chevalier is our investigative producer. Cecil Rosner is director of CBC Regional Investigations. And the managing editor of CBC Ottawa is Ruth Zodu. If you like this podcast, please subscribe for free wherever you get your podcasts. And please help us spread the word by rating, reviewing, or simply telling a friend. If you or someone you know has been sexually abused, community resources can help. Reach out to a trusted person, a sexual assault center, or a rape crisis center in your area. There are also resources available for people at risk of suicide, such as the Canadian Suicide Prevention Service

or the U.S.-based National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Check online for information. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.