Ugly chapter ends for pastor

Decades-old charges dismissed

Criminal sexual misconduct allegations are often complicated and nuanced, and when the charges are also historic and date back four decades, exceedingly difficult to prove.

That is the bottom line of an unseemly chapter that ended Tuesday for Toronto’s famous gay pastor, Rev. Brent Hawkes of the Metropolitan Community Church.

The 66- year- old, muchdecorated Hawkes — he was appointed to the Order of Canada and the Order of New Brunswick, his native province, and received as well the Award of Merit from the City of Toronto, his adopted home — was acquitted of indecent assault and gross indecency upon a teenager at the school where he then taught and coached basketball.

The Criminal Code sections under which Hawkes was charged were long ago repealed, but in the mid1970s they were in effect.

In a carefully crafted decision in which he said he believed some of what Hawkes said and some of what his accuser — and two witnesses — said, Nova Scotia Provincial Court Judge Alan Tufts found that “it is not clear what happened in that bedroom that evening 41 years ago,” and said he wasn’t satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt “that the accused had sexual activity with the complainant either with or without his consent.”

The complainant and two witnesses, whose names are protected by the publication ban standard in sexual cases, visited the mobile home where Hawkes lived near Greenwood, N. S., not far from West Kings District High School in Auburn.

The judge found there were so many inconsistencies among the memories of the complainant and the witnesses, who were all students at the school, that he couldn’t even say with certainty when the “events giving rise” to the charges occurred, but that it was probably in the 1975-76 school year.

Hawkes taught math and coached basketball at West Kings for three years beginning in 1973. What the judge called “the events” was a visit by all three teenagers, then 16 or 17, to Hawkes’ trailer.

And while he couldn’t nail down the specifics, the judge said he was satisfied “alcohol was being consumed” and that “they were playing games, including caps ( a game where players throw beer caps at one another, the goal to knock off the bottle caps balanced on the top of the bottles) and possibly ‘strip caps’ or some other game where the players, including the accused, were removing some of their clothing.”

Virtually everything else about that night was in dispute, the judge said.

Witness A, whom t he judge found most credible and believable if also curiously reluctant, said he saw Hawkes performing oral sex on the complainant.

He also t estified t hat Hawkes was “hitting” on him too, telling him he was “80- per- cent sure” he was gay.

Witness B said he saw Hawkes and the complainant going down the hall, nude, and that at another point, Hawkes kissed him, too, and that at yet a different time, he and Mr. X masturbated one another. But he acknowledged he was intoxicated, and suggested “something was spiked.”

Witness C, who was the complainant, said Hawkes had suggested they play “strip caps,” and that they touch each other, and that Hawkes led him to the bedroom, where he suggested, he forced oral sex on him while telling him he was beautiful and that he wanted to take him to Provincetown to show him off.

This testimony, Judge Tufts said, was “very vivid and detailed” and initially “very compelling.”

But the complainant was also very drunk, and had written out “his story” in therapy, and admitted his memory continues to evolve, and that memories were still “popping up.”

Hawkes always denied that any sexual activity had taken place, and while testifying in his own defence, said of the allegations: “It’s not true. It did not happen.”

Hawkes also testified that one night, after he had come out as a gay man, first to his parents and then others — he stopped teaching and a few years later started at the MCC — the complainant came to his trailer and told him he thought he was gay.

He said he told the young man he should seek out a place where gay men were welcome and that because he was a “good-looking guy,” he had suggested Provincetown.

The judge allowed an expert, Dr. Timothy Moore, to testify about memory, and the perils of what’s called “i magination i nflation,” where an imagined experience “can take on aura of subjective reality.”

In t he end, t he j udge said, while “I do not believe t he accused and do not accept a great deal of his testimony as being true” — particularly with Hawkes’ “very careful” answer that he didn’t serve the teens alcohol “when it was clear he allowed them to serve themselves” — there were such serious inconsistencies among the testimony of the complainant and the witnesses, and such problems with the complainant’s “recreated” memory, “there is simply not enough reliable evidence …”

If the charges themselves were shocking to his friends and congregants at his downtown church, so too was the picture of the man and the times that emerged at trial.

Back then, Hawkes was far from the “equal rights champion” and LGBT advocate he became, but rather a closeted gay man who felt he had to hide his sexual orientation to keep his job.

WHEN IT WAS CLEAR HE ALLOWED THEM TO SERVE THEMSELVES.