Class reunion sparked historic sex abuse case
Bayshore Public School alumni shared decades-old complaints
In May 2016, Bayshore Public School held a two-day celebration to mark its 50th anniversary with a picnic, a school mixer and an alumni soccer game.
The reunion drew a crowd of former students to the Woodbridge Crescent school, but not all of the memories shared that weekend were happy ones.
At an evening house party, a group of former Bayshore students discussed their recollections of gym teacher and basketball coach Don Greenham and some of the rumours that attached to him.
“A friend of mine, standing right next to me just came out and said, ‘Oh, yeah, he did it to me,’” said alumni Adam Fishman, who had flown in from Vancouver for the reunion.
The former student told the gathering he had been sexually assaulted by Greenham in a gymnasium storage closet and on a school camping trip.
Fishman was deeply disturbed by the allegations levelled by his former classmate and contacted Ottawa police, who put him in touch with sexual assault investigator Det. Carrie Archibald. Fishman shared what he had heard with Archibald and later posted the detective’s contact information on a Facebook page for Bayshore alumni.
“That’s how the whole thing started,” Fishman said in an interview. “Nobody had done anything in 30 years … It bugged the hell out of me.”
Three months later, Greenham was charged with 14 counts of gross indecency and indecent assault for alleged incidents that occurred between 1970 and 1982, while he was a teacher at Bayshore and a basketball coach at Bell High School.
The charges were in connection with four former students.
The police investigation continued for more than a year, and by December 2016 Greenham faced abuse allegations from 14 former students. He was then charged with 54 counts of indecent assault, gross indecency and issuing threats.
But Archibald, lead investigator in the case, told this newspaper that more victims had come forward in recent months. Had the case gone to trial, she said, Greenham would have faced more than 60 charges related to 18 victims. “And it’s quite possible,” she said, “that there were still more victims.”
Greenham died of a heart attack in early March, two months before the case was to be heard. The 75-year-old had maintained his innocence and intended to plead not guilty.
Archibald said she was disappointed that the victims “will not have an opportunity to speak their truth.” Although the police investigation is now closed, she said, new complainants can still come forward to police if they require victim-support services.
The raft of allegations against Greenham represent the most significant sexual abuse case in the history of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
But with Greenham dead and his trial cancelled, complainants must now turn to civil courts for answers. At least four former students are suing Greenham’s estate and the public school board for $8 million in damages.
As part of those lawsuits, the plaintiffs will attempt to show that the board was negligent and heedlessly exposed students to harm. A key issue will be how much school administrators knew about Greenham.
Earlier this month, the board said it had no record of concerns being expressed about Greenham while he was a teacher and coach.
But a former Bell High School teacher has claimed he warned administrators about the “shady characteristics” of the basketball coach in the early 1980s. Don “Bucky” Buchanan taught business classes at Bell for 30 years before retiring in 2011.
Buchanan posted on Facebook in late 2016 in response to a news story about Greenham’s arrest. “When I first came to Bell, and discovered he was coaching basketball,” Buchanan wrote, “I went to the admin team to warn them about his many ‘shady’ characteristics. They thought I was nuts, as, according to them, Don Greenham practically invented basketball.”
Buchanan died of cancer in September 2017, but his widow, Valerie, insisted her late husband “knew there was something wrong with that guy back then. He made that post before he died because it always bothered him. But he never had direct proof.”
Valerie Buchanan did not know the exact nature of the warning that her husband gave to school officials about Greenham.
Greenham worked as a basketball coach at Bell High School in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he was still a teacher and guidance counsellor at Bayshore. He was known as a demanding, volatile coach who would sometimes pull players from the floor by their jerseys; he also took an active part in the physical hazing of young players, according to several former players.
At least two former players have accused him of sexually abusing them at out-of-town basketball tournaments, during which he would assign players to sleep in his room.
His teams established the Bell Bruins as a basketball powerhouse, but Greenham resigned abruptly as coach in 1982 for reasons that remain unexplained.
Strangely, during a similar time period, Bell High School students were also exposed to the depredations of a music teacher, Robert “Bob” Clarke.
Earlier this month, Clarke, 73, pleaded guilty to sexual abuse charges related to eight students from Bell High School and Sir Robert Borden High School, where he also worked. Those crimes occurred between 1973 and 1992.
Clarke was sentenced to two years in prison and three years of probation.