RCMP cover up rape allegations
against Prince George Mounties
The supposed whistleblowers are part of the problem.
So are the media, not to mention B.C.’s legislature,
legal establishment and SJWs
February 20, 2023
February 21, 2023 update: I missed it and Ian Mulgrew didn’t acknowledge it, but the Toronto Star covered Lisa Mackenzie’s allegations and related details more thoroughly in a November 2022 story. Read it here.
The Prince George courthouse where David Ramsay presided
before his 2004 sentencing for preying on the vulnerable.
In a recent story about Prince George RCMP, Postmedia reporter Ian Mulgrew wrote: “Words fail me.” So did questions. Furthermore his series of articles has, at least so far, missed an obvious and important point: We need independent civilian investigation of cops accused of sexual misconduct.
Replete with holes, one of Mulgrew’s air-conditioned stories suggests that retired Mounties Lisa Mackenzie and Garry Kerr have spent years pushing for an investigation into highly disturbing evidence that Mackenzie brought forward in 2006.
That year, Mackenzie said, she found seven videos showing Prince George cops committing sexual assaults on native women. Alarming as that is, so is the context. Roughly around that time Prince George judge David Ramsay indulged in violent coercive sex on teenage and underage native girls, some of whom came before him in court. In 2004 Ramsay was sentenced to seven years for charges including sexual assault causing bodily harm, three counts of obtaining sexual services from a minor and breach of trust by a public officer. He died in prison in 2008.
Coinciding with the Ramsay scandal were sexual misconduct allegations against at least nine Prince George Mounties and a lawyer. At least three cops were suspended on full pay during investigations. In 2006 an adjudicator refused to conduct a disciplinary hearing into RCMP officer Justin Harris because his fellow cops dragged out their investigation past the one-year limit. (Why?) In September 2008 Harris sued in retaliation for the investigation. Investigators dropped the other allegations without calling for disciplinary hearings. While on suspension and sick leave that he blamed on the allegations, Vice reported, Harris drew full pay without working for about 17 years.
As Mulgrew reports, Mackenzie said the seven videos belonged to her ex, RCMP officer Joseph Kohut. In January 2006 she informed RCMP staff sergeant Bill Goughnour, who told her to keep quiet. That, she did. (Why, when RCMP failed to act on her information?)
But a few days after talking to Goughnour, Mackenzie said, Kohut broke into her house and retrieved six of the tapes. He apparently missed a seventh, which stayed in her possession. Mackenzie suspected that Goughnour and other RCMP brass warned Kohut that she had the tapes.
Supposedly an RCMP internal investigation exonerated Kohut who, other media have reported, sued the force in November 2007 for investigating him.
Mulgrew’s account lapses to 2011. That’s when Mackenzie told Kerr about the matter. Both gave statements to other RCMP officers who were supposedly investigating. She said Mounties took seven months to collect her remaining video.
Another silence, again unquestioned by Mulgrew, lasted until 2015. That’s when Kerr, by that time retired, wrote to then-commissioner Bob Paulson asking him to investigate. Paulson referred the matter to chief superintendent Derren Lench. Lench told Kerr that the matter had been fully investigated and that the video showed no evidence of crime. (Mackenzie can’t refute that?)
Oh, and investigators lost the video. (Mackenzie hadn’t made a copy, despite her suspicions about Goughnour and other Mounties?)
Mulgrew then lurches to 2018 when RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki received a report concluding “a complete failure by all (B.C.) management personnel” on this matter. Lench and everyone else screwed up, deliberately one can easily suspect. No investigation was carried out; therefore Goughnour and Kohut weren’t exonerated after all. Questions remain about the video content.
The next development reported by Mulgrew didn’t come until 2021, when Kerr called some MPs. The same year Lucki said she agreed with recommendations to review the allegations. But there’s no word on whether she ordered the review. Kerr got an apology. (Kerr got an apology? Wasn’t this something about victims of sexual assault?) Mackenzie is suing the RCMP. (She was one of the victims?)
B.C. solicitor general Mike Farnworth got a copy of the report but predictably passed the buck back to the Mounties. Mulgrew missed an especially good opportunity to ask Farnworth a question that no one but me asks: Why doesn’t he get jurisdiction for B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office over cases of sexual misconduct? The IIO has authority over RCMP in cases involving death and serious injury, so Ottawa would likely (and gladly) relieve itself of this responsibility too.
This is disappointing work from Mulgrew, a reporter who had occasionally shown tendencies that pre-date the total onslaught of courtier journalism.
Of course it’s a much greater RCMP failing. But that’s a thoroughly predictable result of B.C.’s compliant legislature, legal establishment, media and social justice phonies.
Related:
Sexual misconduct and rape: Cops cover up for cops
Where’s Farnworth? Where’s Eby?
Where are the media and SJWs?
Read about B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office
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