Uncover - S22 E3: The Dance of the Lemons | "The Band Played On"

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

In 1986, Peter Hamer told a school administrator about his vulgar, abusive music teacher. Soon, the teacher was gone. Other adults had known what was going on, but it was a different time. This episode explores the institutional failure that allowed the abuse to continue. Listener discretion is advised.

Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson and I host CBC's daily news podcast, Front Burner. Every weekday, we set out to have a conversation about the biggest Canadian and global issues that you want to know more about, from politics to culture to online stuff. We spend a lot of time on the show thinking about the best ways to have those conversations and searching for the smartest people to have them with. That's it. That's The Cell. I hope you'll tune in. 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. This is Sir Robert Borden High School. It's not too far from Bell High, and it's commencement day. The school is open to parents and the public. Smells the same. Really? Yeah.

Mark Leach is my tour guide. He was a student here between 1988 and 1993. There's that classic sound of heels on the floor, you know. That's what I think of teachers when I hear that sound. Clark moved here from Bell High, and that was after Peter Hamer complained about the music teacher to his principal. School colours are obviously yellow and blue. Yellow and blue.

Yeah, I was thinking about wearing my tie. So, yeah, the whole auditorium's there, and the music department was down here. Let's go see what we can find. Somebody's practicing vocals there. I guess so, right? Okay, where are you taking me? This is the music room. The auditorium's right there.

And then his office, and there are practice rooms, and then there was the big... Like other victims, Mark Leach has questions questions kind of a long lonely hallway we don't know for sure why clark was moved here from bell high in 1986. the school board is still refusing to share files or give answers all we know is it coincided with peter hamer's complaints his principal. This is my class. I'm in here somewhere. Oh, there's lots of pictures. You might be young here. Yeah, I'd like to take a look. Photos hang in the hall outside the music room.

I was at Niagara Falls. We went to Toronto for a music fest. That's Clark right there. It's easy to spot the music teacher. Bob Clark is smiling broadly. He's surrounded by students on all sides. I see all my friends so it's probably with them somewhere. Bob Clark has been accused of horrible crimes against his students but more than two years after the charges photos of this teacher are still hanging on these walls. He's put the tall guys in the back so I'm probably back here somewhere.

He's going to put the tall guys in the back so I'm probably back here somewhere. Mark Leach stands at six foot three inches tall. When he started high school in 1988 he was already taller than most of his peers. Yeah let's go back here and take a look. These days he's the caretaker of an estate in West Quebec and spends a lot of time outside. So this is his office still exactly the same. Back in grade nine this big guy chose to play the tuba. So this is the music room. This is where all the practicing was and all the bands.

We were here like three or four days a week at like 6 in the morning practicing. There's like 30 or 40 kids in here all squeaking away on their instruments. So there's no windows in here? No windows, no other teachers, the doors are closed. It's a soundproof room, right? So he could do and say anything he wanted to, really. Yeah. And what happened to you?

Did it happen in here? Yeah, right there. His door was closed. His story is too familiar. I was... Sorry. It's okay. I mean, I almost hesitate asking you, but we're here, so...

So strange. Mark Leach was trapped in Clark's music room. So yeah, the door was closed and he came up to me and was asking about a girl that I'd become friendly with. And the door was closed and he just cornered me right here. And he put his hand in my groin and was saying things to me. And he was so close to me, he was like spitting on my face, you know. I was trying to pretend that that didn't happen and I was trying to figure out what he was so close to me, he was, like, spitting on my face, you know. I was trying to pretend that that didn't happen,

and I was trying to figure out what he was doing. And before I knew it, it was over. And I don't know how or why, but he went one way, I went the other, and that was the end of it. Does it make you uncomfortable to be here? No. No, it makes me uncomfortable to think about that. But I had to, like, mentally prepare myself for this, you know, realize

that it was a kid. It's not me, you know. But I had good times here. I had great times in the school. I had great times in this room. And, uh, like, the music program and everything, it helped me, you know. It helped me come out of my shell

and then it just, like, turned to shit. Such a strange spot. It's like revisiting a grave. It's like the same feeling, looking at a tombstone. I'm Julie Ireton. For years, dozens of students were abused by three teachers. These teachers were popular, successful.

They won over everyone, not just the kids. What did I miss? That's what I said, what did I miss? Boy, they sure never mentioned what was going on in the basketball room, and I didn't mention what was going on in the music room. He was a predator, and it wasn't my fault, and I was a child. We have our own little mini Catholic church thing going on here. They were protecting these guys.

There were rumours, whispers in the hallways. Some colleagues even had suspicions. And the band played on. This is a podcast from CBC Ottawa. Episode 3, The Dance of the Lemons. In the main foyer of Sir Robert Borden High School, there's a wall of framed photos, headshots of principals. There are several black and white pictures, all of men. Then, as the years go on, the photos switch to colour,

and the first coloured photo is a woman, Marcia Reynolds. This would have been the principal you probably remember, is it? Yeah, I remember her. I dealt more with the vice principal, but I certainly had interactions with her. So that's Marcia Reynolds, 88 to 94. I've discovered she was the person in charge when Bob Clark was pushed out of teaching in 1992.

I don't want to get her in trouble or anything. I just want to know the truth. Like, why was he let go? Why did they force him to leave? What was the ultimate thing that, you know, someone said or reported or whatever? Why is they force him to leave? What was the ultimate thing that you know someone said or reported or whatever? Why is it such a secret? Mark Leach didn't tell anyone about Clark when he was in high school but he thinks someone at his school must have. Why else would Bob Clark be forced to resign in

1992? That's the puzzling part is it could have been one of my friends it could have been someone else that you know was more harmed than I was or anybody else I don't know. All Leach knows is that back in 92 there was no investigation no help for students like him who Clark had touched. He thinks this former principal Marcia Reynolds could have answers. I would like to think that it was I mean if it was a serious offense they would have called the police or something like at what where's the line where you call authorities to let them know like if you're firing someone for sexual misconduct or treating kids in a sexual way or whatever it was would you not also let the police know? I've been looking for teachers,

people who might have known Bob Clark. I understand that you used to teach at Bell High School. That's right. Yeah. I've now found or called 35 former teachers and administrators. So many of Bob Clark's former colleagues have died or they won't talk. But this retired teacher wants to chat. Bob Clark, yes, he was an excellent, excellent gentleman and nice teacher.

Okay. He hasn't heard sex crime charges have been laid. But then again, he says he didn't really know Clark well. I ask if he can suggest other teachers who did. Oh, come on. Another colleague of mine, she met me about two, three months ago, Diane Langlois. I brought a yearbook. Oh, did you? So we can go down memorably.

Let me get my glasses. I could do that if I have to look at something. Diane Langlois sits in her immaculate living room. Mine are all packed away. She has wavy auburn hair. She's wearing a blue scarf and gold bracelets. They jingle when she talks with her hands. Langlois taught at Bell High School for 28 years. A lot of years.

Yeah, I retired with 33 and a half years, so, you know, I'm going to say a lot a lot of years there loved it at Bell absolutely was in heaven at Bell she doesn't associate her experience at Bell with the gray clouds that moved in in 2016 that's when three teachers were charged with sex crimes against some 30 former students. So when you heard about the charges, what happened? I quietly cried. You know, not a wailing or anything, but I quietly cried, and I said, what did I miss? It's honest. That's why I said, what did I miss? When it comes to the charges against Bob Clark, she wasn't surprised.

No, no, I wasn't surprised at all. But I didn't have any proof of allegations. All I had was the information when I was a new young teacher in there. In the school, a student came to me one morning, 630, and I getting used to railing at me. Why aren't you doing anything? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And she just won't, you know, he's hurting people. He's getting away with things. He shouldn't be doing things. And I said to her, what is she doing? She says, he's hurting students. You know, he's taking things from them. She never, ever, ever used the word sexual. But she says he's doing things to them. And I said, I'll deal with this. I promise you I will.

It was the late 1970s, Clark's early days of teaching. I was really upset. I was emotionally upset. And I told him. Langlois says she went to a school administrator. Back up the clock, I'm in my early 20s as well, and this was a whole new thing. But I knew it had to be dealt with, and I went. He said, leave it with me. I will investigate. I will get to it.

He promised me. And I approached him several times. He said, don't worry, it's been dealt with. Langlois always believed the person she told did something. But the fact is abuse continued at this point I have evidence that on three different occasions a school staff member was alerted to Bob Clark's bad behaviour Diane Langlois told a school administrator in the late 1970s he said leave it with me I investigate. I will get to it. Victim John Cody told teachers around the same time.

They knew. They knew. And I knew. They knew. I told teachers too. Victim Peter Hamer told a principal in 1986. I told him about the hugs, that he had wanted to take pictures of me in the in the back room. So what exactly was done with that information? Hello. Hi there is this Mr. Beattie? Yes it is. Hi it's Julie Ireton calling from CBC. Hi Julie. How are you? Good. John Beattie is a retired principal. Now, were you a principal at Bell High School at one point?

Yes, I was. Okay. He was in charge of the school when both Bob Clark and Don Grenham were there. He's agreed to talk to me, but only over the phone. Do you have any memory of working with Bob Clark or Donald Grenham? Yes. Do you? Yes. In fact, John Beattie was a principal at Bell High School between 1975 and 1980. He was one of the principals during the years Don Grenham was coaching basketball at Bell.

Many of the charges against the coach stem from that time. And did you ever catch wind of some of the things that were going on there? No, none whatever. I simply never heard a complaint from students. Beattie was also Bob Clark's boss. What your impressions of Mr. Clark were at the time? That he was difficult to work with from time to time, but that he was a very talented music teacher and just ran a marvelous extracurricular program. Yeah, I've heard a lot about his success. He won a lot of awards as well, right? Yes, he did. Yes.

And why was he difficult? He was quite demanding in terms of resources. He wasn't always super cooperative with other staff members. It was very much a Bob Clark operation. The problems with Bob Clark went well beyond cooperating with colleagues. And one disturbing story from Beattie's time illustrates that. I spoke to a former Bell Music student after he talked to police. He says in 1977, his father went to former principal John Beattie with concerns about Clark.

Clark was paying too much attention to his son, getting too close. Yeah, that is correct. It did not come in the form of a complaint. It came in the form of a visit from Mr. We can't name this person. I have spoken to him, but his name is still protected by a publication ban. And I spoke to Bob about the issue. Mr. did not want any further action taken. He just wanted to report it and get the concern stopped. So I don't regard it,

didn't regard it as an outright complaint, and I had the feeling that what he wanted to do was just put a stop to whatever was happening. Here's what was happening with Clark. I found this information in court documents. As band leader, he had access to kids' addresses in his files. One night, Bob Clark went to the student's home. He looked in the teen's basement bedroom window.

The boy took off his clothes, got into bed, and then he saw Clark lurking in his window. In another incident, Bob Clark rubbed the same student and masturbated in front of him. But it's unclear how much this kid told his father at the time, or how much his father told Principal Beattie. Back in 1977, John Beattie says the victim's father was... Was fairly vague about what his concerns were. But he just indicated that Bob's behavior was a little bit out of line with what you'd normally expect from a teacher. And so what were you able to do about that at the time?

I spoke to Bob and indicated that it had to stop And to the best of my knowledge, it did Okay, and were there ever any other allegations that came to you from any other students? No, there weren't came to you from any other students? No, there weren't. John Beattie was principal at Bell High until 1980 when he was promoted to another job with the school board. He says it was several years before he heard from Bob Clark again. In 1992, Beattie received a call. A very unusual phone call from Bob Clark saying that he was in some difficulty and thought he should resign and I must admit I encouraged him to resign but but he just

talked about difficulties and you didn't know the nature of why he was like why he would think that he needed to resign? No. The school board has told me it launched an investigation into Bob Clark around this time and I'm just wondering if you were made aware of of what the investigation was in 1992. Not that I can remember no. The school board confirmed Clark was being investigated because of sexually inappropriate comments. The board says before the investigation was concluded, Clark did resign. But that wasn't until 1992.

We now know this abusive behavior dates back to at least the early 1970s. Would it be common for a teacher to be pushed out like that? And especially if it had it was in regard to something that was sexual in nature? It would be unusual, but sometimes people were pushed out quietly in the hopes of getting rid of them. I can't say that that was the case with Bob Clark at all. So these kind of things would have been kept quite insular and quiet, I guess. Yes.

One of the things that worries me a little bit in a situation like this is that the questions come from the point of view of the values of 2018. And, you know, things were different 25, 30 years ago. At least in the point of teacher misbehaviour, there was a very different set of legalities and a very different set of processes. As far back as the mid-1960s in Canada, there was a legal duty to report suspected child abuse. Principals, teachers and doctors were among the professionals who held that

responsibility. But that duty is much't clear on that. It was only later that, for instance, the duty to report to a children's aid society and so on became something that was very, very firm in people's minds. That's bullshit. I'd like to try and be sort of understanding and forgiving, but I'm struggling with that. Peter Hamer and I meet in a park not far from Bell High.

You would have been principal at the time. Yeah, that is correct. Peter shakes his head and clenches his jaw when he hears Beattie's recollection of the father coming to him in 1977. I didn't regard this as an outright complaint. I struggle with that because that's not how you operate an organization. You don't call staff out for vague terms. Peter just doesn't buy Beattie's memory of that conversation as a vague comment. The fact of the matter is he remembers it from the 70s. And again, how many conversations with

how many parents do you have over the course of a career? To me, it doesn't reconcile. I've had millions of conversations with people and I don't remember 99% of them, right? But the ones I remember are the ones that are impactful. But BD told me he was not aware of anything more going on. That doesn't satisfy Peter. Yeah, you know, at some point somebody's got to say something because there's no question that somebody knew. There's another principle Peter and I need to talk about. His name was Pat Carroll, the guy Peter went to in 1986, the one Peter told that Clark wanted to take naked pictures of him for marks. I've been trying to find that principle for months.

I googled, nothing came up. Then I called every Pat, Patrick, Patty and P. Carroll I could find in Canada. No luck. And then one day I googled again and I found his obituary. So I read it and I started crying. I just, because I thought, he and I know the truth. Because it's, you know, He was the adult at the time. He's the guy who said, what do you want me to do?

He's the guy who told me, okay, he won't be at Bell next year. It would have been something he would have remembered. And we can't ask him now. I know it's not... I feel... I feel like I should have done this 20 years ago. Like, it... Because it's hard to hold people accountable

when they don't remember or they're dead, right? it's hard to hold people accountable when they don't remember or they're dead, right? Sometimes it does feel like we're chasing ghosts. I've crossed one of the principals off my list, but I'm still searching for others. When I went to Sir Robert Borden High School with Mark Leach, we saw those photos of principals. Marcia Reynolds, the first woman principal at the high school, stood out. Reynolds was in charge when Clark was finally pushed out of teaching and resigned in 1992. What led to that push? What exactly did he do? What does she know? I find her phone number and I give her a call. Marcia Reynolds answers the phone on the first ring. I introduce myself. Were you a principal at Sir Robert Borden? She tells me she was. Do you mind if I ask you a few

questions? I ask her if she remembers Bob Clark. Reynolds says she does not. She tells me she has a poor memory. Bob Clark was the music teacher at Sir Robert Borden. I believe the same year you were principal. But she does list the other schools where she was principal. Then all of a sudden, Reynolds says, sorry, she has to go, and she hangs up. Oh, can I ask you if you... Is this Marcia? Hi there. My name is Julie Ireton. I did call you back in the spring. When I call her back several weeks later, Marcia Reynolds tells me again she doesn't remember those days. I just wanted to ask you...

Hello? She abruptly hangs up. But I find someone who does remember. Someone with a clear recollection of Bob Clark and Marcia Reynolds. Hi, Julie. Hi, how are you? I'm doing well, thanks. How are you? Good. It sounds like we have a nice clear line.

Good. Trevor Fenton was in band at Sir Robert Borden High School in the late 1980s. Well, I'm working from home today. I'm general counsel at a small multinational. He's a lawyer working in the UK. So yeah, I run a legal team of about 10 people. Okay. But you're in Dundee, Scotland?

Correct. In 1987, Trevor Fenton started playing trombone in the school band. He remembers Bob Clark being a bit of a goof. I don't know. I mean, if I was to put it in sort of teenage terms, people thought he was a bit of a geek and a bit of a loser, sort of on a social level, you know, but they learned a lot from him musically. Trevor Fenton remembers Clark targeting boys, and he'd find ways to touch students like standing in the music room door. The front of his body would be sort of into the middle of the doorway and sometimes he had no choice or he positioned himself so that you had to sort of squirm to get past him. But it was comments just

before a music competition that were the final straw for Fenton. He was just 15 years old at the time. And so he at that point he was you, chatting with some of the boys that he liked to chat up, and I was one of them for some reason. And he asked me if, he said, yeah, you can really feel the tension around here. And he asks me in front of about five people, so did you masturbate last night? And I said, I beg your fucking pardon. He says, well, you know, with tense moments like this, you know, it can really help relieve the tension. That 15-year-old wasn't afraid to push back.

It might have been more than once. I told him to fuck off right in front of the entire class. And I was basically daring him to send me to the principal. At that time, Fenton's own dad was also a principal. In fact, he was in charge over at Bell High School, where Clark had taught just a few years before. Trevor Fenton finally told his dad what was going on. I just said, you know what, enough's enough. I just wanted to stop. So I went and I spoke to my father first.

His parents encouraged him to go to the principal, Marcia Reynolds. Mrs. Reynolds, and I did. This was in 1989, three years before Clark was pushed out of teaching. I'd say, you know, she was very attentive and she made it clear that this was going to stop. But exactly how it would stop would be left up to Trevor Fenton. For the second time in this story, the power was given to a teenager. She put the decision kind of in my hands. And she, not kind of, she asked me flat out, as I recall,

whether this was something that she wanted, that I wanted to press a formal complaint about. And there I am, 15 years old, having to make what felt to me like I was making a decision about a man's career, the livelihood that his family enjoys as a result of his career, and of course not really knowing the extent to which my own behavior would come under scrutiny. In 1989, there was no documented complaint against Clark. Trevor Fenton agreed that the principal would just quietly have a chat with the music teacher. As I recall, she said, essentially, I'll take him to the woodshed, do it quietly and get him to stop that behavior.

He has no idea what Reynolds actually said to Clark. But this all happened three years before Clark left teaching. I'm still missing a piece of the puzzle. What did Clark do to make Reynolds finally want to get rid of him in 1992? How bad did it have to get? Looking back, the way Fenton's complaint was handled was something his dad, both as a parent and as a principal, always regretted. Trevor Fenton's dad, Gord, died in 2000.

If he was still with us, I think he'd quite openly say that he would handle, he would have handled that differently if he'd had another chance because he told me in the late 90s that that was a regret that he would have handled that differently if he'd had another chance. Because he told me in the late 90s that that was a regret that he had from his career when he looked at situations that he became involved in. And as a parent, in that case, he wasn't dealing with it as the principal, but as a parent. He thinks it was a mistake to even put that decision in my hands. That's just how they handled things, though. That's just how they handled things.

Throughout this investigation, I've heard assumptions, pronouncements. It was a different time. That's just how they handled things. Teachers had different relationships with students and there were different values or rules or laws. That's just how they handled things. But there are school administrators from back then who say that was not the way things were supposed to be handled. You have the legal obligation. Anne Jones is one of them. obligation. Ann Jones is one of them. If a student comes to you and says something is happening with the teacher or somebody in authority or anybody for

that matter whether it's parents or an older brother or sister that you have a duty to report, you have no right to question it. You have to believe it. You err on the side of believing the child as opposed to making your own judgment. Ann Jones spent her entire career in education. She's not afraid to speak out and she never really fit the stereotype. I'm small, like I'm only five foot two. She climbed from vice principal to principal to superintendent at a time when women weren't typically in those jobs. The image of a vice principal was the mean guy, you know, the guy that cracked heads. She wasn't a head cracker.

And even then, when I got the job, when our son was still breastfeeding, actually, and I told them at first that I just couldn't do it because I had a newborn and Stan kept telling me to. My husband kept saying you go girl. She's now 76 and retired living in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and over the course of her career Anne Jones saw a lot of changes. Back in the 1970s when she started working in Ottawa schools, things were different. It was an odd time because the men were in charge. The men went out to lunch together. And at meetings, of course, the atmosphere was cigarette smokes and cigar smoke.

And a principal was omnipotent, like a principal was the ruler of his own domain. His domain, and it was almost always a him. Ann Jones worked for the Ottawa Board of Education. Now it was right next door to the Carleton School Board, and that's where the three accused teachers worked. But the boards were close enough that they often knew each other's business. In 1998, the two boards officially amalgamated. Back in her day, Jones was well aware of Bell High School's award-winning music teacher, Bob Clark, even though he taught in the neighboring board. I understood how important he was and why they would want to protect him. It was the culture of the day.

Bell was always top in sports, top in music, and that was really important to them. At first, Ann Jones heard innuendo about Bob Clark. And then sometime in the 1980s, a parent got in touch with her looking for advice. The woman's son was in Bob Clark's music class. And I talked to this parent and I told her she should go back and talk to the principal and tell them what was going on. And she was very, very reluctant to do that because she had actually heard other parents getting nowhere. Like, she was quite frustrated. So she did... I may be remembering this wrong,

but I can't remember whether they decided to move their child or the suggestion was that the child be moved. But I know eventually that her child was moved out of the school to another school. So sometimes a kid had to change schools. Other times, a teacher moved. When we had difficulty with teachers as well, we'd have a staffing meeting at the end of each year. And at the staffing meeting, we would sort of a list of teachers that needed to be moved.

And sometimes they were called Typhoid Marys or Typhoid Rogers. But they also referred to it as the Dance of the Lemons. The Dance of the lemons. The dance of the lemons. And the idea was that everybody had to sort of take their turn at taking one of these difficult teachers or a teacher that had caused some issue or another. So as opposed to just dealing with it up front, they moved them. 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 3 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.

There might be a lot of reasons principals would want to move a teacher, and the reason might not even come up at those meetings. It might have been just a whisper. Institutional and social attitudes were different in the 1970s. There was a duty to report, but it wasn't often enforced. Reporting a bad teacher just wasn't part of the culture. Anne Jones prides herself on being among those who pushed for change. When she became a superintendent, she led workshops educating principals. What we were trying to pound into their heads was that you're not the judge and jury anymore.

You have to report, period. And whether he's a nice guy, whether he's your best friend, you must report. And eventually, attitudes did change. That slowly but surely, slowly, probably way too slowly, this began to change. But the dance of the lemons is not ancient history. In the U.S., they call it passing the trash. A 2018 study by researchers at the University of Virginia found sexually abusive teachers were moved to other schools because administrators feared legal liability and tarnished reputations.

In Canada, Toronto's star investigations in the last two years show problematic and sometimes abusive teachers were still being moved without proper reporting. And this is in Ontario, Canada's biggest province. Former students know the so-called Dance of the Lemons can have a profound impact. I came forward. Maybe I was, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back. There was just, this is a bad guy and I really want him gone because I want my brother to be safe. But Peter Hamer had no idea his teacher's move to another school would put others in danger. Authorities there knew, right? Peter told them, and they put it under the carpet or shuffled papers or whatever they did and sent them to my school where he did it to me and maybe others. Mark Leach encountered Bob Clark at his school, Sir Robert Borden.

That's where Clark was moved after Peter complained. I was young. I was 15. My brain was still forming. I couldn't assess risk or anything like that. And he was in a position of authority and he was trusted by the school board and me to give us a safe education. Mark is one of Clark's youngest known victims. It was really hard to meet Mark. I didn't want there to be a victim from Sir Robert Borden and... Peter came up to me crying, apologizing because he thought it was his fault for sending him from Bell to where I was. And he was blaming himself for what happened to me. It was really very sad because I thought nothing that I did

stopped Bob Clark. And I'd always thought that maybe I had a little peace in solving it. And that wasn't the case. We're victims. We're not responsible. It's like I was put in a room with a predator and nobody was protecting me.

The band played on. An award-winning Bell High School band, Maple Leaf Rag, on a record in 1978. Bob Clark was the band's leader. The record album cover shows girls in long skirts and boys in crisp yellow shirts. They stand in front of Canada's parliament buildings holding their instruments. Boys in that photo were being abused. Teacher Diane Langlois remembers that band. Just makes my heart go pitter-patter. It throws a sadness on what I thought was such a happy, happy time. She taught at Bell High for more than 28 years. Had opportunities to go to other places,

had opportunities for promotions, stayed very, very happy at Bell. Diane Langlois is the teacher who told a school administrator about Bob Clark in the late 1970s. But she also worked closely at Bell with the two other teachers accused of sex crimes against students. What did you teach? I started off in a phys ed, assistant head of phys ed, and I taught English.

Diane Langlois coached several teams at Bell, and one of her first coaching jobs was with Don Grenham. Grenham is the Bell High coach accused of abusing male students in locker rooms and on canoe trips. And Langlois was on the bench with him. I went to 80-some-odd games every year with him. It was a lot. It was a lot. He had a lot of control over them. But they were unbelievable boys.

But Langlois never suspected any sexual abuse by the coach. In 2016, when Grenham was charged with more than 55 crimes against students, Langlois was floored. Then she got a call from a former colleague, another Bell teacher. He was dying of cancer. He wanted to talk to Langlois, so she went to his deathbed and she was shocked by this former teacher's greeting. I'm really upset with you. And I said, yeah, I want to know why. What did I do? And then he told me, he said, you coached with Grenham. And I said, yes, I did.

And he was crying. And I literally was on the bed holding him and rocking him. I mean, here he is in his dying bed. He's accusing, I guess it was, sorry, in a way, accusatorial, you know. Why did you support this guy? I said, I'm so sorry. I didn't know anything. And he said, I believe you, Diane.

I believe you, Diane. And I felt compelled to tell him that I turned in Bob Clark. But I said to him, a student came to me and, you know, said something about Bob Clark, and I went. I told. I followed up on it. I did that. I'm not afraid to do that. I would have done that if I'd known anything. Diane Langlois now believes Dawn Grenham was guilty, and she doesn't doubt the charges against Bob Clark. But she also worked closely with the third teacher in this story, Tim Stanitz. I did produce musicals with him. We had competitions. Langlois didn't think Tim Stanitz could ever hurt his students.

Absolutely don't believe it. Even to this day, I don't believe it. By all accounts, Tim Stanitz was a very popular, hard-working teacher. He led legendary, award-winning bands. Tim worked his career from 1986 to 2016 and was getting ready to retire. He was my brother's music teacher. My brother loved him. Peter Hamer knew of Tim Stanitz. In fact, I think he was a really well-respected, well-loved music teacher. It was shortly after Peter complained to a principal about Clark's sexually abusive behavior that Tim Stanitz took over the music room. That was some 30 years ago. And in May of 2016, I was reading Facebook and somebody had posted that Tim

Stanitz had been arrested for sexually assaulting his... Sorry. Take your time. Take your time. He had been arrested for sexually assaulting students, and I lost it because he was the teacher that was replacing them. Replacing Bob Clark. Two men accused of sexually assaulting students worked in one music room over the course of four decades. One replaced the other. In 2016, they were both charged and they both faced trials. But then...

A former music teacher is dead. see exactly the person in the car is he ejected from the vehicle yeah i don't think it's very good a former music teacher is dead coming up on the next episode he took everything from me and all i had left was my day in court and he took that from me too when you are are in coaching, when you're in musicals, there are students that do become close to you. There are students that will land up in your office. He was certainly an older married man taking me in different places and doing things that, while they admittedly felt good, made me so uncomfortable and scared. while they admittedly felt good, made me so uncomfortable and scared.

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.