Uncover - S22 E2: The Coach | "The Band Played On"

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

The coach was successful, charismatic and powerful, and in 1968 he treated student Rob Ferron like he was special. Years later, Madeleine Glaus discovers her son had been groped by the same coach, and had also been preyed on by a music teacher. Both men worked at the same school at the same time. How else were they connected? Listener discretion is advised.

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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. If you find these stories affect you, please reach out to a mental health professional for help. Can you hear me okay? I hear you fine. It's windy. I'm going to get in my car so that I can avoid any and all breeze. There. Okay, so tell me your name, though, so I make sure I get the proper pronunciation.

Sure. My name is Franz. My last name is Glauss, which is also a Swiss-German name, G-L-A-U-S. Franz Glauss. Franz Glauss is in Montana. He's lived there for most of his adult life, but he grew up in the suburbs of Canada's capital. I went to Bell in 73. Forty years after graduating high school, Franz Glauss spoke to Ottawa police. They were investigating the former Bell coach, Don Grenham. And then summer of 74, I would have crossed Grenham's path and he was glaring at me.

Franz has his own story about the coach, an imposing man whose successful basketball teams became legend at Bell High. Donald Grenham actually grabbed my testicles. And this was through my clothes, right? So fortunately, but still, for me, it was a real shocker. Of course, you're sort of half basking in the attention you're getting from this, you know, demigod Don Grenham. That demigod was charged in 2016. He was accused of 55 sex crimes involving 22 students he taught and coached in the 1970s and 80s. It wasn't something that lasted very long but then it was over and I don't even remember

what we said after it. I've been looking for anything that connects three accused teachers at Bell High. Franz Glauss is a connection. He played first trumpet on this album recorded by the Bell High School band. Bob Clark was his music teacher. I mean, one's a music band director and a good one. He took our bands to citywide competitions and we won them. We won them all the time. And Granum had great basketball teams and would win citywide competitions.

So these guys made their mark. citywide competitions. So these guys made their mark. I'm Julie Ireton. Over the course of five decades, dozens of students were abused by three teachers. 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.

One teacher, the coach, was accused of sex crimes going back 50 years. He worked down the hall from the music teacher and the band played on. This is a podcast from CBC Ottawa. Episode 2, The Coach. This story began with the music teacher, Bob Clark. Now I'm following leads on the coach. I head north in the middle of a snowstorm. I'm meeting the very first victim to have emerged.

So Rob, hello. Hey, Julie. How was your trip? It was great. Okay, good. You had no weather issues? Rob Farron's experience predates the Bell High School horrors. There's a whole tank of windshield washer fluid. Yeah, yeah, no, it was good.

And you brought coffee. It happened long before Franz Klaus was touched by the coach, when Rob Farron was Grenham's student in the late 1960s. I brought slippers. He's lived and worked in North Bay, Ontario for his whole life, and right now he's counting down the days until his retirement. Yeah, eight months and eight days, just in case you were wondering, you know, that's like people say, always say, but who's counting?

And I said, me, every single day. So yeah, next, end of next September. He grabs a coffee and he settles in for a conversation that may go beyond his comfort zone. Did she really think you went the wrong way? Only a few people know Rob's story, but he's agreed to tell me because he wants to know how abuse was allowed to continue for decades. I have a list of questions that I want to just make sure that I get to. Okay. Rob Farron talks about difficult memories from middle school. It all happened in North Bay about 50 years ago.

Yeah, yeah, close to it. 1968 is sort of the focal point of my connection to Don Grenham. That's when he was Rob Farron's gym teacher. It was early on in Grenham's career and he was teaching phys ed in North Bay. He's probably in the vicinity of 12 years older than me, so he's a very young man then, you know. When I first met him, I would have been 12 and 67. Grenham was a fit, towering figure back then when Farron was in grade eight. The coach picked him and another boy to help out with a gymnastics class. So for about a month at least, or maybe six weeks, at the end of that school year, this other young fella and myself didn't have to go to regular classes anymore. Somehow he'd gotten permission for us to sort of do this in lieu of, which was great by me. The gym teacher made Farron feel special, and that was important to this kid. His dad, a Second World War vet,

had anger issues, and sometimes things at home could be rough. But with Grenham, it was different. Little things like, hey, Rob, I'm 13. He said, how'd you like to go start my car for me? I don't know why he would do that in May or June anyway, you know, but he had a really nice car. He had this bright red Pontiac 2 plus 2. I think it might have been a Parisian, but it was a sport. It was convertible, bucket seats. It was lovely and good there. So I started his car for him. I'm not sure why. And of course course, being 13 and thinking, well, I'm just going to put it in reverse and back up six feet and put it in drive and go forward six feet. It's pretty cool.

I'm driving. But it was pretty special. I was now special. I was a very special young man within the school, which was maybe something that I really wanted to be, I guess. Unfortunately, it was part of maybe what is quote-unquote called the grooming process. After gym classes, Don Grenham encouraged all the sweaty 13-year-old boys to shower together, and the coach watched them.

He gave direction. Some of it's fun, like soap yourself all up and slide across the floor, guys. Don't worry about it. Have some fun. Yell and scream, I'll take care of the flackack you know but but it got to be more than that it was the encouragement of a well why don't you soap you you know johnny soap dougie or something and and see how that you know if that's fun and i don't ever recall him joining us in the shower. He would stand at the edges. He was observing, suggesting.

It was always a game. It was just always a game of some sort. Did the kids like him? I think so. Yeah, I do. You know? I know I did. I liked him liking me. But that would change. The canoe trip became the nightmare. Yeah.

I've spoken to a lot of victims of Don Grenham. Almost every one has a disturbing canoe or road trip story. For years, Grenham took students on trips away from their parents. There were five of us, and we were recent grade eight graduates. And he came to us and to our parents and said that most years he went on canoe trips and he thought that we would enjoy that. A 13-year-old kid going on a canoe trip with a favourite teacher and some buddies. What could be better? And again, you're special again, right? Because you got included in this group. Even at that age, Rob Farron was already an avid canoeist, a great swimmer, and he loved fishing for his supper.

So my parents thought, OK, that sounds wonderful. So Don Grenham drove them several hours south to the St. Lawrence Seaway to launch their canoes. So I was a really experienced canoer. Along the way, they picked up a couple of men in their late teens or early 20s. They were kind of fun. They were a little bit crazy, to my way of thinking. They were apparently connected to Don Grenham from a scouting troop. So we set out four canoes.

I'm in the back of one, and Don Grenham and the two older guys from his scouting troop were in the backs of the other three and the five of us were distributed in these four canoes. And away we went. And my memory says is that it was darn close to two weeks. A long time. In the late afternoon they would set up camp and pitch two tents. And so four of us, the grade eights, the kids, would sleep in one. Don Granum and the two older guys and one of the kids would sleep in the other one.

And it makes you wonder. But I can't wonder. I know what happened to me. That when it was my turn to sleep in the tent, I thought, okay, this is great. You know? But it wasn't great. It was awful.

And it's never left him. You had to participate in these games, these abusive games, where you were made to take your bottoms off your underwear to lie down naked. And one or both of the young men from the scout troop would tie like a string or a shoelace, something like that, around your genitals, around your testicles and your penis. And they'd tie a knot and leave one end long. And then they would start making you do sort of like bridges,

pulling you up vertically. all the while smiling like isn't this fun don granum would never do that he would never pull the string i don't have any memory. But he would touch you. He would absolutely touch you. He would play with your testicles. He would... I don't know if he's trying to masturbate you or what the hell he was trying to do, but he would play with your penis.

And I have no idea how long this would go on for. But when it was over, he got a piece of blueberry pie. A reward for being special. There would be many more canoe trips in Don Grenham's future. Rob Farron's experience in North Bay was in 1968. Two years later, Don Grenham was teaching at another middle school, this time in a suburb of Ottawa. He taught and coached grades 7 and 8, but Don Grenham had another job.

He became the much-admired basketball coach, the coach at a nearby high school, Bell High. He was a favorite of the kids, really just a fun guy, great coach, got the best out of everybody on the team and gave everybody a chance to play. Franz Glauss met Don Grenham in middle school, like Rob Farron before him. He was a guidance counselor, but also a basketball coach. Grenham was that teacher kids are supposed to go to with problems.

But he was actually playing awful games with his students. problems. But he was actually playing awful games with his students. One involved grabbing boys' genitals. And the idea was you would name a chocolate bar, and if it was a crunchy chocolate bar, he would squeeze harder. If it was a soft chocolate bar, he would relax his grip. All right. And Grenham did this and a lot more with his favorite group of guys, a lot more like tape their penises together and tie their penises up to a branch of a tree at the campground where he would take kids to go camping. So these are a couple of the treatments that stand out in my mind, as you can imagine, but there were others that I can't get into.

So this guy's a real perv. But when you're growing up, 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. Because you don't know yet that it's a total perversion. Like Rob Farron, Franz Klaus didn't tell his parents. Because there's something wrong, but you don't want to tell your parents about it.

But his mom did find out a few years later. It was a summer evening at the cottage around the campfire. Franz Klaus's younger cousins were telling a story about Don Grenham on a canoe trip. Now, by this time, Franz was no longer a student at the middle school, and Grenham wasn't his teacher or coach anymore. Franz was now at Bell High School and he had dropped basketball. But he says his mom was like a lioness and she was disturbed by what she had overheard at the campfire, determined to find out what was going on with this teacher. Mom approached me later to ask me if it was true or if I knew anything about what she had just heard. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, Grenham actually grabbed me once.

She said, why didn't you tell me? And I'm like, oh, you know, it just didn't feel like it, Mom, you know. So she's like, she's kind of beside herself. Because I can't believe that guy is there and he's been doing this all these years because if he did it to you that's three years ago and all the other kids that he's doing this to and so on and she just she just couldn't believe it she said I'm gonna have to do something about this she she pretty much got on a on a mission that was kind of her own thing. My mom, her name is Madeleine.

Hi Madeleine, it's Julie Ireton. Madeleine Glouse moved from Ottawa to Montreal several years ago. She's now in her 80s. It's been four decades, but she still remembers Don Graham. How are you today? Not too bad. How are you? I'm well.

It was good. Madeline Glouse has short-cropped grey hair. She lives in this first-floor apartment with her youngest son and their dog, Abby. She never left them alone their dog, Abby. She gets the dog settled and then we start talking about the 70s. That night she overheard a couple girls talking about a teacher at the middle school. They were at the cottage and the girl talking about the coach was her niece. And they were at the fire and I was around.

I don't know what I was doing. And I hear what they were saying about Mr. Grenam. And it's just, you know, I wasn't sure. I said, am I hearing well? So I came close to the fire and I said what are you talking about girl they were a little sort of embarrassed because they didn't really want me to know I said well you better tell me because I heard enough what's going on in there and then they say Mr. Graham when he goes on canoe trip you do this with the boy and he do that with the boy, and even in school.

Keep in mind, this is several years after Rob Farron's camping trip with Grenham. It's a different time, a different place, same teacher. In my belief, the man is sick you know it must have been very how could I say that humiliate to those two boy and all the boy they must have had a trauma after that coming back from that canoe trip. I've spoken to 10 victims of Don Grenham and most don't feel comfortable speaking on the record but they say they suspected that adults knew. None of them knew for sure until I found Madeline Klaus. You know he doesn't deserve to be around kids because he's sick. So I went to see the what you

call that the director? The principal. I said, you have to do something about that because I think this man doesn't deserve to be around kid and certainly not going in canoe trip with them where he's free to do whatever he wants. So at this point, Grenham was a teacher at the middle school and he was still coaching basketball at Bell High. Madeline Glouse wondered if he was hurting boys at both schools, so she warned the principal at the middle school.

So I said, I don't care. 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. Look at me. I'm not going to let it go. You know, look at me. I'm not going to let it go. I said, I will go to the radio, to the newspaper, and I'll talk about it and I'll expose the school and you. And you don't want that. So after I said, I'm giving you one week, I give him two weeks. I asked my niece, is Mr. Grenham out of school? No, after a week.

Two weeks, Mr. Grenham was out, was not out of school. So I went to the school board of Carleton. Carleton School Board. Yeah. And this, I don't remember the name of the man that I talked to. And I told him exactly what I told him. And he seems to be shocked. I don't know if he was. She urged the school board to investigate, and then she tried to rally other parents. She figured everyone would be as outraged as she was.

But none of the parents wanted to get involved. They look very embarrassing. They could hardly talk to me. Yeah. Do you think they just didn't believe you too? Could be. I don't know. I don't know.

I got my doubt about that. They probably didn't want to believe me. But she didn't give up. She went to the school board and demanded action. The lioness. And Madeline Glouse felt she had been heard. I trust the guy that I talked to. He looks so sincere. After that, a couple of school board employees came to Bell High School and they pulled Franz out of his 10th

grade class for a chat. Franz told them what Grenham had done to him in middle school and Madeline assumed the school board would take action. So I don't know you know I'm not I'm not an expert in those kind of thing and I think I did as far as I could go. Did you ever consider going to the police at the time? No. No, that didn't come in my mind. But some 40 years later, Madeline Glouse did get a call from the police. They were investigating Dawn Grenham for historical sexual abuse. And they had heard that Madeline might know something, that she might have

information. The police investigation led to those 55 sex crime charges against Grenham in 2016. What did you think when you heard about the charges against Mr. Grenham so many years later, several decades later? What did you think? What came to your mind? Disappointment. Total disappointment of the whole system. Many of the charges against Grenham were for crimes that happened years after she reported him to administrators. After I have told him everything. Some of the 22 alleged victims were friends of Franz Klaus. It's children.

You know, you traumatize those kids for the rest of their life. And those men have probably been traumatized too. And that's why they turned out like that. Who knows? Madeline now knows nothing was done to stop Grenham's abuse of students, despite her efforts. She went to the principal. She went to the school board.

She even confronted him face to face. Did you ever see Donald Grenham after that? I met him on the street a couple months after he was walking with his wife and he was sort of you know shocked when he saw me because he knew it's me and I said are you Mr. Grenham? I said, you're a very sick man. You have to go and help. And I said, you should help him to have help. You said that to his wife? To his wife. What was their reaction? No, no reaction at all. Nothing. Can you describe him? What did he look like? and what did he look like? He was very, very tall.

You know, I'm so short, everybody's taller. And sort of a square face. Chateaubriand, something like that. He had blue eyes. He didn't look like that. No, no. He didn't look like somebody you should be afraid of. He looks like a good man, really. And his wife, too.

They look like good people. It's amazing. My mom has made me very, very proud over the years in many ways. I think I can remember her saying to us all those decades ago how cowardly people were, just what lack of courage people had and how they were willing to let just great offenses take place because of their cowardice. Franz Glauss was taught by both the coach, Don Grenham, and Bob Clark, the music teacher.

He was preyed upon by both teachers. the coach, Don Grenham, and Bob Clark, the music teacher. He was preyed upon by both teachers. I know. Well, it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking that kids and their innocence are preyed upon by such predators and that such predators are given such cover. and that such predators are given such cover. A couple years after Grenham grabbed Franz, he was playing lead trumpet in Bob Clark's band. After band practice one night, Clark offered Franz a ride home.

All the school buses were gone, there was no other way home, and he offered to give me a ride home. And it was cool because he drove a little Lotus, a little yellow Lotus two-seater. And so we're driving home and he's, you know, it's a, it's a sports car. So we're down low on the ground and we're just, it's pretty tight in there, but, and he's, he's got his hand on the stick shift and then his hand just wandered to my knee and he gave me kind of this little kind of underneath look and I'm like, what? And I moved my leg over and looked at him weird. And that was the end of it. Right. So he was testing me and I had no idea. I had no clue that Clark had any of these proclivities, none until he tried this on me. And so, you know,

until he tried this on me. And so, you know, these guys, I mean, they have a way about them that, I don't know, protects them from kids blowing the whistle on them. They have a way about them. You know, when I look back, I wonder, what is it? What is it that kept me from saying or doing anything or saying anything to my parents at all? And I don't know. I can't answer that, except that I wasn't

grown up yet. And Franz Klaus isn't the only Bell High grad to be preyed upon by both teachers. I have found evidence of another, but the second man doesn't want to talk to me. Do you suspect at all that Grenham and Clark had anything to do with each other and the crimes? No. None whatsoever. There is nothing that points to Don Grenham and Bob Clark operating together to abuse teens. In fact, it doesn't appear that they were even friends. But there are connections. The gym was just down the hall from the music room at Bell High,

and both men abused teens around the same time in the same place. And the administration was the same. Both these teachers worked under the same principles in the same school board, and we now know that some of the people in charge did hear complaints about both Don Grenham and Bob Clark. 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. Okay, Peter, are you there? I am, yeah. You can hear me? How are you doing? I'm good. How are you doing today? I'm good. I'm good.

I've been in regular contact with Peter Hamer. He's the one who first went to police about the music teacher, Bob Clark. Nothing seems to be very easy with this investigation trying to get these documents. He's also been searching for more information about his abuser. We know Clark wasn't the only one getting away with abusing students over the years. Not the only case where warnings were not heeded. And it's and I just don't understand. How do you let somebody stay in that,

you know, when there was a complaint? And it's, you know, when you think about it, you've got a vice principal... Peter's been connecting with former students over social media, students of both the music teacher and the coach, and some claim to have had similar encounters. It was an interesting conversation because I just responded in a message saying,

do we know each other? And then he just responded with, bell high. He says, I think you were ahead of me by a year or two. And I just responded saying... And some of those messages are difficult to receive. Sorry. It's okay. He said, I was 15 when it started.

And I said to him, are you telling me that Bob Clark abused you too? And he said, yes. And he's never told anybody. And his story is devastating. All of the stories are. You know, we spent a couple of hours going back and forth. Peter has also talked to a man who was abused by the coach in 1976. That was a few years after Madeline Glouse went to administrators. It was a mostly one-sided

conversation. This man has another unsettling story set on a canoe trip with Don Grenham and teen boys. It sounds like he didn't really make it that far out of high school, and he's had a significantly difficult life. Yeah. He's talked about, you know, wanting to take his life. He's talked about, you know, his poor health, social skills, you know, being a loner, you know, surviving through alcohol. He's talked about wishing to die. and he's talked about wishing to die and it's just, he says, you know, he gets flashbacks, tries to bury it and it never works.

And I mean, I'm so thankful that he reached out to me but I'm so devastated that we found another victim and it's just, it's so sad. I'm worried about peter he's taken on a role of therapist for these survivors and it's taking a toll i just i feel horrible when a person in authority takes advantage of a kid trust is broken and that is hard to fix. It's fascinating what it does to your head. You know, and it's the combination of who he was from the perspective of being an authority figure and where you are in your development and your age, and it's horrible. Yeah, it's crazy. Issues of trust have plagued Rob Farron too.

Even 50 years later, the abuse still reverberates. If somebody pays you a compliment or says, you know what, hey kid, you're good at that, you go, yeah, what do you want? All the time. All the time. He didn't trust anybody. It all goes back to Rob Farron's experience with the coach in that tent. The impact was trust.

Trusting myself was the biggest thing. That's recent. That's really recent. To just trust that I know who I am and that I know what I'm doing and I know what's right and wrong and my sense of values. I have faith and trust in those things. But I didn't for decades, on and on and on. He tried to suppress the memories, but they never went away.

You know, you're 64 years old, you're going, ah, I dealt with that a long time ago. You know, forget it. But you can't, you never will. I realize that now, i never will forget that it doesn't impact my day-to-day life all that much really at all until it does and then it goes away again and and no need for it to arise even though every once in a while there's little thought little thing in the back of your brain when you hear some other story, somebody you don't know,

so there's no connection. And you go, son of a bitch. Well, of course it's got to come to the surface. It has to. It all came crashing down when Rob Farron was in his 30s. Back then he was married with two kids. Then depression set in. It strained his marriage and the relationship with his two girls.

I don't know what they think about dad leaving when they were young. We've never talked about it. He's had a lot of therapy, and he's been remarried in the years since. But there is still a wedge between him and his daughters. I'm thankful every day that I have a relationship with my oldest daughter. I hope someday that my youngest, that we're at least able to send a card or chat on the phone or something. I hope that.

or chat on the phone or something. I hope that. And I don't know, because I've never thought about this story specifically and its impact on my relationship to my girls. If somehow this knowledge helped them make some sense of who their dad is, that would be really special. The coach, Don Grenham. He taught for 35 years and retired with his reputation intact.

And then... Good evening, it's 29 degrees at 4.30. Grenham was arrested and charged in August 2016. A retired Ottawa teacher and coach accused of historic sexual assault was released on bail today. A retired Ottawa teacher and coach accused of historic sexual assault was released on bail today. 73-year-old Donald Grenham is charged with 14 counts of gross indecency and indecent assault. Police had recently charged two other teachers with sexual assault. All three had worked at Bell High. He's, of course, presumed innocent.

We're anxious to get all the disclosure information and begin to defend him on the charges. As a condition of his release, Grenham is ordered to stay away from children under the age of 16. We're anxious to get all the disclosure information and begin to defend him on the charges. As a condition of his release, Grenham is ordered to stay away from children under the age of 16. Dozens of Don Grenham's former students came forward. They accused him of sexual touching, masturbation and oral sex. The abuse often involved multiple kids at the same time. In some cases, Grenham coached them to molest each other. Did you have anything to say about the charges laid against you?

Outside the courthouse, Grenham and his family wouldn't speak to reporters. Lawyer Sean May says they're standing by him. But the coach will not be held accountable. Not by a court. Don Grenham is dead. According to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, he died of an apparent heart attack at age 75. It happened at his home in March 2018, just months before his trial was set to begin.

But victims are still asking, why wasn't he stopped? The only people who might have those answers are the people who were in charge at the time. Shortly after Grenham died, I asked his former employer for information, and the Ottawa Carleton District School Board told me it has no record of concerns regarding Grenham's behavior. But that's not the story I heard from a former principal. story I heard from a former principal. Back in 1978, Mike Vise was Don Grenham's boss at the middle school. This was years after Franz Glauss' mother, Madeline Glauss, complained about the coach

to a different principal. Hi there, uh, this Mr. Vise? The retired principal is reluctant to speak to me and he doesn't want me to broadcast his voice. Mike Weiss is in his 80s, and he's concerned about his memory. It's Julie Ireton calling. I see that you called me back. Sorry I missed your call. But Mike Weiss says what he tells me is on the record. He says in 1978, a student complained about Don Grenham's inappropriate behavior on yet another canoe trip. Right. And do you remember the nature of the complaint that the boy had talked to you about? He won't give me specifics, but he remembers he spoke to Grenham. And he also reported it to a school

board official. Soon after that, Don Grenham was working at a different school. And just to confirm, so Grenham was moved at that time because of the complaint from that boy? Weiss says he believes so, but he can't be sure. Okay, you weren't in on it, like it was the board that made that decision? And the school board has no record of any disciplinary action. Grenham kept teaching middle school and coaching at Bell High. Two of the teachers who abused students were moved. Both men had been reported to authorities.

Coming up on the next episode, did an institutional culture allow this to happen? Then all of a sudden it was SRB. And then I heard things were happening there and I thought oh my god I can't believe this. Sometimes they were called typhoid Mary's or typhoid Rogers but they also referred to it as the the dance of the lemons. It's time to peel back the curtain on systemic flaws. The practice of moving problematic teachers from

school to school. 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.