By Judith Lavoie and Derek Spalding
National Post
October 22, 2011
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/10/22/convicted-pedophile-shuffled-between-scout-troops-in-canada-u-s/
 |
| Richard Turley in his scouting uniform in the 1980s. |
VICTORIA —A Scout leader, later convicted of numerous sexual assaults against children, was shuffled from a Scout group in central Victoria to a Sea Scout group in Cordova Bay, — about 10 kilometres across town —after regional Scout Canada leaders decided suspicions of abuse were not hard enough evidence to go to police.
Richard (Rick) Turley, 58, who was involved with Scouts in California and in Victoria through the 1970s and '80s and who spent years preying on victims in Victoria and other Vancouver Island communities, is a focal point of a widespread investigation by the CBC's The Fifth Estate and Los Angeles Times.
The investigation into Scouts in both Canada and the United State claims the organizations kept confidential lists of pedophiles.
In the 1980s, when Turley started volunteering with the 2nd Douglas Scout Group in Victoria, which met at Craigflower elementary school and included boys from the Gorge, View Royal, Burnside and Tillicum areas, had already had been convicted in the U.S. of kidnapping a boy he met through Scouts and served time in a state hospital as a "mentally disordered sex offender."
Jean Buydens, 2nd Douglas group committee chairwoman during the 1980s, said in an interview that she was uncomfortable with Turley from the moment he arrived, but parents loved him.
"The mothers thought he was a wonderful leader. He would take the boys away camping at the weekends and he would have them over to his house. They thought he was a wonderfully involved Scout leader," she said.
Sometime around 1985, Buydens told regional commissioner Craig Vanni and the professional scouter about suspicions that Turley was abusing the boys.
One boy had gone to Turley's house to cut the grass "and when his mother picked him up he was white and shaking and said 'I am never going there again,'" Buydens said.
There were frequent, and sometimes unauthorized, camping trips and a Beaver leader, who unexpectedly dropped by Turley's house, saw boys with beer bottles, she said.
Turley also brought boys into the Scout group from outside the area, including under-age boys, Buydens said.
"All these things accumulated in my head and I had a funny feeling about it, so I went to Scout House and told them. I thought they would handle it," she said.
It was decided Turley should be removed from 2nd Douglas, but he was allowed to volunteer with Cordova Sea Scouts under the supervision of another leader, who had been warned he was never to be alone with the boys, Buydens said.
Police were not told because there was not enough proof, she said.
"I was shocked they would give him another chance, but they explained they had no grounds to stop it. It was just hearsay," Buydens said.
Vanni could not be contacted Friday.
Turley was sentenced to seven years in 1996 for convictions on five separate counts of sexual assaults on four young boys, including a case where he committed buggery on one child between 1971 and 1973, court documents show.
The courts later deemed him a dangerous offender, but he successfully appealed that decision and was designated a long-term offender, instead.
The Boy Scout leader committed most of the assaults in the Greater Victoria area, but some incidents took place in various communities on Vancouver Island. One boy was assaulted in Victoria, the Gulf Islands, Nanaimo, Esquimalt and Saanich between 1983 and 1992. Another boy was assaulted on Saltspring Island for several years starting in 1983.
But the Boy Scouts were only a small part of his pattern of abuse, according to Ruth Picha, the Crown prosecutor working the case. Turley was involved in several community organizations, including Little League baseball, and more than once assaulted children of the mothers he was dating, she explained. He was willing to do anything to get him near children.
"We don't go through dangerous offender hearings on every individual convicted of sexual assaults," Picha said. "We do it in cases where the risk to reoffend is high."
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.