Canadian Forces pedophile priest had multiple child victims

OTTAWA - A Canadian Forces chaplain took children to his quarters at an Edmonton military base and gave them alcohol before sexually assaulting them, according to newly released court martial transcripts.

The Canadian Forces has fought for 40 years to keep such details under wraps, even to the point of falsely claiming the original charges against pedophile Chaplain Capt. Angus

McRae couldn’t be revealed to the public.

But the newly released transcripts from 1980 show the military knew McRae had multiple victims and knew of previous allegations against the priest related to incidents in Kingston and Cornwall.

McRae was convicted of sodomizing a child at CFB Edmonton in 1980 and was kicked out of the military. In 1989, McRae was arrested by civilian police in the Toronto area for sexually molesting two boys. He pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation and sexual interference for fondling the buttocks of boys aged 12 and 14. McRae, then 63, was given three years’ probation and avoided any jail time. He died in May 2011.

The release of the heavily censored court martial transcripts is a victory for Bobbie Bees who was sexually assaulted in 1980 at CFB Edmonton when he was seven years old. Bees, whose father was in the military, had been fighting the Canadian Forces and the

Department of National Defence unsuccessfully for eight years to get McRae’s records and court martial transcripts released under the access to information law.

Bees had maintained the court martial record would show the Catholic priest had sexually assaulted a number of children and the Canadian Forces leadership knew about those crimes. He has also been pushing for military police to conduct investigations into McRae’s other sexual assaults and links to other individuals who associated with the priest.

The release of the court martial transcripts came after the Ottawa Citizen published articles in August and September about the ongoing efforts by the military and DND to block Bees from getting the documents.

“I wasn’t surprised what I saw in the transcripts,” Bees said in an interview. “I always suspected there were multiple victims, but the transcript finally proves it.”