A man who lived through a dark era of Saint John history — one that saw hundreds of children sexually abused allegedly at the hands of a police officer — has made it his life’s work to ensure another generation of children doesn’t fall victim to predators.
“It’s real damaging, to be violated and be a part of that… Our whole community has paid a high price,” Bobby Hayes told Global News, referring to the 25 year period during which former Saint John Police Sgt. Kenneth Estabrooks abused children in the poverty-stricken South End.
READ MORE: Saint John police officer sexually abused over 260 children, investigators suspect
“I grew up in a community where it was happening repeatedly and I see my friends — actually four of them died — they’re drug addicts, alcoholic,” he said of people who survived abuse. “They drank themselves to death and we’d sit down and talk about when we were kids.”
Hayes runs the Joshua Group — a volunteer organization that works with “at risk” children, many of whom come from fatherless homes or grow up exposed to alcoholism and drug abuse.
In a neighbourhood where there are houses “with bullet holes through doors,” the Joshua Group’s repurposed old barn has become a safe space for the kids, where they can take part in sports, get healthy meals and just be with other kids dealing with similar situations.
The kids wait for the Joshua Group’s big, blue bus to pick them up after school and on weekends.
He never gives up on any of them and he says the children become like brothers and sisters, looking out for one another.
It’s a support network they might not have otherwise.
“The parents are around but it’s just the neighbourhood it’s a whole different world,” Hayes told Global News.
He said kids used to look out for one another when he was growing up and “everybody knew who to watch out for.”
It’s believed the warning signs of Estabrooks’ deeds were ignored.
During his trial, a former police detective named Herbert Robertson testified that in 1975, two kids complained that they had been molested by Estabrooks.
Robertson said Estabrooks confessed to these accusations, but instead of being charged, he was quietly moved to a city works job, the records show.
READ MORE: Timeline: A city’s shame and decades of abuse
New Brunswick’s port city has gotten a dubious distinction of having the highest rate of reported sexual assault in the country.
Out of every 100,000 people in Canada, 68 report being sexually assaulted. But in Saint John, that rate is almost 50 per cent higher — 97 people out of every 100,000.
“There seem to be a lot of stories of sexual abuse in this city,” private investigator David Perry said, who was tasked last year with leading the search for Estabrooks’ alleged victims, after new accusations surfaced. So far, he as found dozens more victims.
Perry has been investigating sex crimes for more than three decades, previously with the Toronto Police Sex Crimes Unit.
READ MORE: A city’s shame: Saint John investigation uncovering long held secrets
Although the statistic is high, he said numbers can be skewed, particularly because of cases of prolific sex abusers or repeat abuse.
“All of those numbers are so massively skewed because of it, all of those numbers are part of it, all of those victims are part of it,” he told Global News.
Another issue is that 95 per cent of child sexual abuse goes unreported, according to the founder and chair of Little Warriors — a Child Sexual Abuse Prevention and Education organization in Edmonton.
“I found the story interesting about Saint John being the biggest place for a child to be sexually abused, just because we don’t know, said Gloria Meldrum. “If 95 per cent of cases are unreported, then we don’t know what the most dangerous place is.”
“On average sexual offenders abuse about 75 to 100 kids each,” she said. “There’s a lot of big cases in the media. But think about the fact that that’s probably only about five per cent of actually what’s going on. That’s really the scary number,” she said.
That may be the situation with a decades old case of sexual abuse in the city involving a Saint John police officer who preyed on children for at least 25 years, dating back to the 1950s.
Saint John Police Force revealed on Monday Estabrooks is suspected of abusing at least 263 children.
Estabrooks was convicted on four counts of indecent assault in 1999 and was sentenced to six years in prison. He died of throat cancer in 2005, shortly after being released from prison.
*With files from Carmen Chai, Brennan Leffler and 16×9
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