SEX ABUSER, 87, SENTENCED
‘Took advantage of my innocence’
Richard James Massen operated a small appliance repair shop out of his home in rural Amherstburg.
He paid young boys to help around the yard. And he abused them. Massen, 87, an Amherstburg resident, was sentenced Friday to two years of house arrest after pleading guilty to charges of indecent assault and gross indecency involving offences committed between 1969 and 1981 on three young boys. As the charges were read in court, Massen, who was sitting in a wheelchair, coughed and wheezed repeatedly, struggling to hear what was being said.
In delivering the sentence, Justice Scott Campbell took Massen’s age and failing health into account. Under house arrest, Massen is allowed to leave for a few hours one day a week under supervision. He will be on probation for three years and his DNA will be put into the national sexual offenders database. He is not allowed anywhere near young children.
The latest convictions weren’t Massen’s first. He pleaded guilty in 1990 to two counts of gross indecency and one count of invitation to sexual touching involving three teenage boys. He served a year in jail and was granted a pardon in 2004.
In 2011, Massen donated $150,000 to the Town of Amherstburg for naming rights near the new Libro Credit Union municipal arena. Windsor Star columnist Anne Jarvis wrote about the donation and revealed Massen’s criminal history, leading the three victims involved in Friday’s sentencing to come forward.
Outside court, Massen’s lawyer, Andrew Bradie, defended the sentence of house arrest by pointing out the charges were based on offences that were committed well before his other conviction in 1990 and only stemmed from the publicity generated as a result of Massen’s donation to the town.
“If people chose to sit back and wait years and years and years, that’s their choice,” Bradie said. “But if you’ve committed offences and they are 20, 30 and 40 years ago, how long should that be hanging over your head? And some people would say forever. I would think there should be some conclusion to it.”
Assistant Crown attorney Scott Pratt told court Massen lived on Meloche Road in Amherstburg for the past 40 years. He had operated a home-based appliance and television repair business out of a barn on the property and employed boys as young as 11 for odd chores. The three victims worked for Massen and were sexually abused by him. Pratt said the boys were touched sexually and Massen performed fellatio on them, demanding oral sex from them as well. Afterward, he would compensate the boys with money.
Pratt told court Massen also took naked Polaroid photographs of his victims and would place them in an album that is said to have contained hundreds of pictures. Massen would also ask the young boys to ejaculate into jars and save the semen.
In a victim-impact statement read by Pratt, one man said he started working for Massen when he was 11 years old. The man described a life that was altered by Massen’s abuse.
“You took advantage of my innocence,” the man wrote. “You provided me with male pornography and shamed me into thinking this was normal behaviour.”
At 15 years old, the victim started to drink to numb the pain and confusion. He soon became angry, rebellious and got in trouble with the police. His family sent him away to help deal with his bad behaviour, but when he returned to Amherstburg, the abuse continued. With no place to hide, he fled Amherstburg and years later ended up in Toronto where, at 17 years old, he turned to prostitution.
By age 34, he had contracted hepatitis C and HIV, his weight was dropping and he knew he had to stop the destructive behaviour and get treatment. His treatment for HIV is ongoing and he’s also on antidepressants and other medications. He still struggles with general mistrust of people, social isolation and flashbacks of the sexual abuse.
“I will never know what my true potential would have been — those years are gone forever,” he wrote. “Moving forward I do not want to see you or have any contact with you.”
Outside the court the victim, who is now in his 50s, said he was disappointed Massen was given house arrest based primarily on his age and failing health.
“I was helpless back then and he wasn’t,” he said. “Now he’s all helpless and he’s got everyone’s pity and that’s not right.”