567-571 HOW TO MAKE AN INNOCENT LOOK LIKE A CRIMINAL

Earlier I indicated that the Review was set up to investigate my publication of two books but that the Summary very subtly shifts the ground to attempt to undermine the author of the books rather than the books themselves. On 30 March, for example, the Provost writes: 'press reports of criminal charges against you have increased these concerns about personal safety.' Yes, I was arrested, but as of this date I have been convicted of nothing, and in a democracy derived from the British model - as Canada is - a person is innocent until proven guilty. In fact, I have not only not been convicted: I have not been tried for anything.

The story is as follows: while EE and I were preparing this book, we stuck pretty close to the villages where we both have homes. EE has the oldest home in the village of Damascus (population 43) while I have the foundation house - Alexander Fraser House - of the village of Arthur about six miles away (population 2100).

I was only pulled out of my 'retreat', so to speak, a few times during the year. One was in early February when I received a telephone call from a lady who began her conversation in a rather arresting way: 'l will delight you with news you may not yet have heard. Japan is pulling back from the new world order plan. We have decided to make a stand for the children.’ ‘Yes,' I said, only half grasping what she meant. She then went on to tell me that she has been born in Japan and had studied there with a scholarly associate of mine, Hiro Ishibashi, and had in fact read some of my books on Yeats. Then suddenly she said, 'I bring you material for your new book.’ ‘Yes,' I said with some anticipation.

'It is about a series of videotapes that have been circulating through the Japanese sex underground, involving a series of child murders, or shall we say 'satanic sacrifices'? They are called ‘snuff' films. We have, as I told you, decided to take a stand for the children, and our investigators have, through a dogged and ingenious method, traced the videos back to Canada in general and Southern Ontario in particular. The people must know.

'Yes,' l gasped, half divining what she was alluding to. 'When are you next in Toronto?' she asked. It was Monday. 'Friday.’ ‘Till Friday then.'

Friday, February the eleventh! Friday, day of horror! The worst Friday of my life!

I slipped away from EE's bedroom at about one a.m., tucking into my left-breast pocket a slip of paper she had given me with an address in Guelph where she said she would meet me between 11 and 12 in the evening. 'I shall carry this over my heart,' I said. 'Over Brad's heart,' she murmured softly. I arrived in Toronto at three, went to my favourite Chinese underground restaurant which was, as I knew, still open, ate, slept, went to a couple of meetings, and met Natsu at the address she had specified. It was seven p.m. I remained there for almost three hours while I listened to a litany of living evil that transcended anything I had ever heard of or had read in the literature of any country. I decided after an hour or so that there was no way of doubting the disingenuousness of the girl. Still I remained until I was certain of the veracity of the information she was communicating.

Then, approaching ten, I bid a grave farewell, got into the Honda, drove to the specified house in Guelph, arriving there at 11:18. EE was there, with her friends, Brad and Matt, and two new acquaintances - afterwards, EE and I often joked that we didn't really know whether they were fish or fowl.

I drew her aside. 'Did you see it?' she asked inquisitively. 'I have my proof,' I answered, and for the next half hour I spared her nothing in delineating every detail of what I had seen and heard. Elizabeth and I ended up publishing three or four articles on various Satanic phenomenon in the book - new world order CORRUPTION IN CANADA - chiefly dealing with children, but this was the first. The subject was therefore totally new, as I thought, to both of us, but as I went on I noticed the pain deepen in her eyes which became like wells of darkness. Suddenly, she cut across my flow: 'Smut films! Snuff films! Do you not have any feelings? Do you not remember my telling you what happened 20 years ago? I was kidnapped by a psychopath, a madman. He held me at knife point all the way while he hitchhiked from Arthur to Guelph, shredding my mink coat between lifts, all the way back to his one-room flat in Guelph where he wired me to the bedsprings of a bed with copper wire and stripped cables in the shape of a cross - yes, a crucifix. Very similar to what you heard about this evening with those young girls. And all the while I was - like them - tortured and tortured. He made incisions in my body with a big buck knife. I was covered in blood and I was vomiting blood. My hands were swollen from the circulation being cut off to more than twice their size: there was no feeling left in them. I was beaten so badly my own family didn't recognize me when it was all over. He certainly knew how to hurt and disfigure with the lead pipe he kept hitting me with.

'And all the time while I was suffering that pain and those indignities to my body, he was making accusations, calling me Dorothy - the name, as I discovered afterwards, of his former wife.

'I shall never forget the blackness of his eyes as he told me to say my last prayers. And as I finished my prayers out loud, he spit on me. He put his hands around my neck and choked me so hard that my left eye actually popped out of my head. I went down the tunnel of light, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, but all across the country the next day: you may have and not known of course it was me. He is dead now, but that doesn't mean that the memory is dead. To this day, I find myself seeing his face in crowds, his eyes disfigured with hate. I can sympathize with the Vietnamese vets who suffer PTS - post-traumatic syndrome because I can understand what it is - this terrible fear that comes out of nowhere. You never know how long it will last and it never goes away. It leaves an invisible scar. Bits come floating out of nowhere into your mind that you haven't remembered since the ordeal, brought on by a smell in the air or by the sight of a leaf falling. It has played hell with my life. It has ruined my life in more ways than one.'

The torrent ceased, and a look of indescribable pain covered the face that I had seen so often animated with joy and wild laughter. I didn't know what to say and began awkwardly with: 'That is a major theme in twentieth-century literature - Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Joyce's.'

'Robert,' she said, cutting me off, 'keep to your literature. What you have told me tonight has opened a chord of memory that I thought was long dead. You have opened up a wound that probably can never be closed: the agony of that wound is more overwhelming than any desire to collaborate with you any longer in any way. Go away from me, Robert. Go back to Arthur. Finish your book without me.'

I didn't see her again for five weeks. I kept telephoning her consistently - she would lift the receiver but would not speak - so consistently that I was arrested on February 24 for 'harassing telephone calls'. The police added the "uttering threats" which became by the time it hit the student newspapers "uttering death threats". And then the next day after Varsity reported the incident, the University lawyer sent out the Summary that has absorbed both of our attention for so long.

'To tell you the truth, Robert,'she said when I saw her again, I never wanted to see you again after that night in Guelph, but all of that had changed now forever and forever.'

That, Mr. Provost, is the story of my 'second arrest'. In the light of the circumstances of the incident and considering that I have not yet been taken to trial (my lawyer tells me that he does not think that it will ever reach trial), does the University judge me to be guilty while I am still being considered by the law to be innocent? Is that the reason why I am barred from my office and the library?