Gordon Stuckless threatened to kill boy, court hears
Maple Leaf Gardens sex abuser attacked 10-year-old in pool, witness testifies
Gordon Stuckless threatened to kill a boy and members of his family if he told anyone Stuckless had sexually assaulted him, a court heard Thursday.
Two witnesses, both now middle-aged men, testified to being sexually abused by Stuckless when they were young, as the trial for the former Maple Leaf Gardens usher reached its second day.
Stuckless, 67, faces several charges relating to the abuse of three boys between 1978 and 1984, including multiple counts of buggery, sexual assault, gross indecency and uttering death threats.
Stuckless has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His main opposition is to the buggery allegations, his lawyer Ari Goldkind said.
The first witness to testify Thursday told the court that he met Stuckelss while working at the Gardens selling ice cream and other food as a 16-year-old in the late 1970s.
Stuckless, in his 30s at the time, took the witness to a public washroom at the Gardens after a hockey game and asked if he could perform specific sexual acts on the witness, to which the teen said “yes,” the witness testified.
Similar scenarios played out about 10 times over the course of two years, until the witness graduated from high school and quit his job at the Gardens, the witness said.
The second witness to testify Thursday said he grew up across the street from another Maple Leaf Gardens employee, who Stuckless would visit a couple of times a month.
On one occasion, when the second witness was 10, Stuckless drove him and his neighbour’s son to a mansion, where the three of them went swimming, the second witness said.
When the neighbour boy went in to use the washroom, Stuckless came up behind the second witness in the pool and raped him, the second witness testified.
Stuckless said during the incident that he “liked little boys” and that he would kill the second witness and his family if the boy told anyone what had happened, the second witness said.
The witnesses identities are protected by a publication ban.
Stuckless was found guilty in 1997 of sexually assaulting at least 24 boys while working at Maple Leaf Gardens between 1969 and 1988.
He was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison in 2016 after pleading guilty to 100 charges related to the sexual abuse of 18 other boys in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
Similar scenarios played out about 10 times over the course of two years, until the witness graduated from high school and quit his job at the Gardens, the witness said