CANADA
Macleans
by Ken MacQueen on Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Former Vancouver Olympic chief John Furlong took to the airwaves Monday night to defend his name after months of letting his lawyers deal with allegations of physical and sexual abuse filed by three former students while he was a volunteer missionary teacher at Catholic schools in Burns Lake and Prince George, B.C. in 1969 and 1970.
He told Global BC television anchor Chris Gailus he’s been living in “hell” since the first allegations surfaced some 13 months ago in an article in Vancouver’s Georgia Straight newspaper. “I was stunned and at the time I thought it’ll go away quickly because there’s no truth to this. So I just thought naively that it will just end. It’ll take a few weeks. Instead of ending, it got worse. It became quite horrible.”
In excerpts from the Global interview Furlong said the story “pulverized us. It pulverized me and my family very, very deeply.” He denied claims he physically abused students while he was a gym teacher. Any punishment he meted out used “phys-ed traditional means, like running laps or stuff like that.” Corporal punishment was not allowed and he didn’t use it, he said. “I’ve never had a strap in my hand in my life.”
This July, two former female students at Immaculata Elementary School in Burns Lake filed civil suits in B.C. Supreme Court against Furlong and the Roman Catholic diocese in both Vancouver and Prince George, accusing him of physical and sexual abuse, and the church of failing to protect its students. These have also been denied by Furlong.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.