Sunday 30 November 2014

Inadequate news reporting in Canada

Adriaan Mak is taking some of Canada's news organisations to task over their reporting of a woman who, after 'memory therapy', believed she witnessed murders some years ago:

The editor-in-chief  The Globe and Mail

Dear Mr Stackhouse.

Although a careful long-time reader of your paper I may have missed similar news in the Globe about the following horrible incidents reported on several times on the CBC National TV and elsewhere.   Your editors may have been more discerning than were those of the CBC who fell for what we now know were false allegations.

On September 24, the CBC aired the story of Glenna Mae Breckenridge who came to believe that her father [Glenn Suggett], murdered three aboriginal boys in July of 1955 on a farm near Pefferlaw and Cannington in the  Durham Region. Glenna Mae also believes that her father sexually abused her from very early childhood well into adolescence, causing three pregnancies and illegal abortions. Glenna forgot the events and eventually became a school teacher.

More than 40 years later, after years of memory therapy Glenna Mae was enabled to recall elements of her forgotten past and reported the murders. The name of the therapist who in the 1990's assisted in the hidden memory retrieval, never came up. The Durham Regional Police, investigated but eventually put the case on hold, because there was not a single bit of evidence and no reports of any missing aboriginal boys from the nearby Ojibway community, Scugog, or anywhere else. A thick dossier shows the police detective work.

The main video Memories of a Murder shows that Glenna remembers exactly where in a pig sty her father (now deceased) buried the boys. The foetuses were never found. An expert using ground penetrating radar also confirmed that remains of two and possibly three young persons were under the pig sty's concrete.

On November 16, 2014, the CBC issued a brief report stating that the Durham Regional police had excavated the spot where Glenna Mae was absolutely certain the bodies had been buried.

The results: No human remains, but instead the usual stones common to the region's glacial till were found under the pig sty; we may presume further that there will be an expensive bill for the police from the current owner of the farm. Certainly not the least of the fallout has been the character assassinations of Glenna Mae's deceased father, Glenn Suggett, and Glenna's aging mother, presumed to have been an enabler.

1. Memories of a Murder: http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV%20Shows/The%20National/ID/2530024258/
2. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/no-bodies-found-under-barn-where-glenna-mae-breckenridge-says-her-dad-buried-boys-1.2837239
3. http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/271351/cbcs-effort-to-uncover-bodies-in-a-58-year-old-triple-murder/
4. http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/first-nations-take-action-in-alleged-killings-of-3-aboriginal-boys-50-years-ago-1.2821122

Perhaps your investigative reporters can do better that the CBC's. The full story has not yet been told.

Yours,
Adriaan J.W. Mak
Canadian contact for parents falsely accused of childhood sexual abuse.
Canada