Furlong had bad reputation, chief says

VANCOUVER – Allegations of abuse against the man who was at the helm of the Vancouver Olympics have circulated for years in the northern British Columbia community where John Furlong was a phys-ed teacher decades ago, the chief of the community says.

The accusations have led to duelling threats of legal action from Furlong, who has flatly denied the allegations, and the reporter whose story in a Vancouver weekly newspaper caused a media storm.

Ex-students say the former gym teacher slapped and kicked them, hurled verbal abuse and strapped them with a yard stick. One woman told CBC News that she has recently recovered memories of sexual abuse.

But in the remote community of the Lake Babine Nation, 1,000 kilometres north of Vancouver, the controversy is not new. The man who gave daily news conferences as the world watched the 2010 Games was well-known to them.

“All throughout the Olympics, I kept hearing from former students, ‘This is the guy who did this to me, and look at him, right up there,’ ” Chief Wilf Adam of the Babine Nation told The Canadian Press.

“He was a mean person. What I saw at Immaculata, he used to slap the students, either boy or girl, and kick them in the a—, and sometimes kick them in the front side.”

Furlong is unequivocal. “I categorically deny absolutely any wrongdoing and I believe that the RCMP in looking into this matter will discredit the complaint entirely because it just did not happen,” he told reporters.

Furlong and his lawyer said Thursday they would make no further comment on the matter.

Physical and emotional abuse was deeply ingrained in the Indian residential school system, and First Nations leaders say there were few differences between the staff approach at residential schools and the day schools run by religious organizations.

Yet Adam said Furlong stood out even in the Catholic school environment. “He was more brutal than the others,” he said.