By Chelsea Laskowski

Part 2: Abused trust: Sask. Rivers apologizes at end of 14-year lawsuit

Nov 26, 2013 | 5:40 AM

For almost 15 years, three women pushed the Saskatchewan Rivers School Division to apologize for victimization they suffered as students.

The abuse revolved around Prince Albert teacher Dennis Foster, who taught for almost 20 years in the school division, from 1975 to 1993.

The women overcame numerous hurdles, twists, and what one of them calls “game playing” during that process.

The need for closure

A written apology from Sask. Rivers School Division is a letter Tammy Gollan waited 15 years to read.

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Since the 1970s, she wanted official acknowledgement that she had been victimized by her teacher, Dennis Foster.

According to Gollan, he started a sexual relationship with her when she was his student at Riverside Community School.

She told her mother after she was abused, and her mother believed it. Gollan’s mother was a secretary at the school and went to the principal.

“They said that I was making it up, that I had some behavioural issues and that they didn’t believe me,” she said.

“When an abuse victim is not believed, they’re not ever going to talk about it again and when they do, it’s in counselling where nobody gets to hear about it,” she said.

In the early 1990s, she was one of numerous females who came forward to press charges against Foster for sexual assault.

But Foster was found not guilty in her case.

Five years later, in the late 1990s, she was skeptical that she could find the closure she needed through action against the Sask. Rivers School Division.

However, four other females who were involved in Foster’s criminal case combined forces with Gollan and entered into a lawsuit against the school division in 1999. Two of those settled at separate times.

“The main reason we started this, we needed an apology to move forward with our lives,” said Gollan.

Cathy Borrowman- Bendle and Sandra – whose name is protected by a publication ban — were Foster’s two other victims to pursue the lawsuit until 2013. They agreed that an apology was important, and said that other people working in the schools while they were being abused knew about it and failed to do anything.

Finally, in October, they each got to read a private apology.

For Borrowman-Bendle, another big reason behind the lawsuit was what she saw as a substitute teacher in the Sask. Rivers School Division.

She said teachers were afraid of losing their jobs if they voiced concerns about other teachers abusing their students.

“Originally I went into it thinking I could get them to change the system,” said Borrowman-Bendle. 

 “It shouldn’t have gone on this long”

 Heading into it, the women had no idea the lawsuit would last as long as it did.

“Normally something like this, in the judicial system, would take two, three years. There was game playing, there was posturing, there was bullshit…And it shouldn’t have gone on this long,” said Borrowman-Bendle.

Media coverage of the case over the years reveals some of what she was referring to.

In 1999, the school division applied to add the mother of one of Foster’s victims as a defendant. Had the application succeeded, this would have meant the girl had to sue her own mother.

The school division’s lawyer at the time, Ron Mills, said that if they were responsible for a failure to protect the child, that woman – who was also sexually assaulted by Foster – also may be responsible.

Ron Cherkewich, the lawyer representing Borrowman-Bendle, Gollan, and Sandra called it an intimidation tactic.
The current director of education with the school division shared his understanding of what happened before he came on board over two years ago.

“Initially there were some challenges in terms of having the three plaintiffs together and finalizing their statement of claim. In the middle, I understand there were some delays between the two legal parties,” said Robert Bratvold, director of education.

According to him, when he came on board with the school division, he understood where the women were coming from.

“This is as long as I have ever experienced and it’s distressing. Frankly, it drove me crazy. I think that this was a terrible thing and we need to resolve it, and it was frustrating. I can’t imagine how frustrating it was for the victims as well,” he said.

The case was finally set to go to trial in November. Before that, they went into pre-trial mediation.

“It’s similar, I think, to a union negotiation. If there is a strike notice, there is a lot more pressure on both parties to resolve the issues before they get to that point. So if we know there is a trial coming up, there is a lot more incentive for both parties to find a settlement that works for both,” said Bratvold.

This incentive was enough for both sides to finally come to a settlement, which included an undisclosed cash payment and two letters of apology – one private and one public. This occurred at the end of October.

“It took us 15 years to get just an apology. The money had nothing to do with it. The money, this is what I have always said, the apology letter I got, the day I got it in the mail, priceless. The amount of money we got, insignificant to the apology letter and the public statement. That’s what we fought for,” said Gollan.

The apology letter

One part of the apology letter surprised Borrowman-Bendle when she read a draft of it.

It was the offer for the School Division’s Senior Leadership Team, which consists of 10 people, to meet with the three women to take recommendations to keep students safe from sexual predators.

“We’ve offered to meet with these three survivors. I don’t know that we’d meet all 10 of us, I think we’d probably take a small group of them to meet together. But if these three, or one or two or three of them would like to meet with the whole group we could probably arrange that,” said Bratvold.

He said he couldn’t speculate on what kind of outcome that could result in, but said they want to listen to them and see what they could do to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

The three women all say besides the letter itself, the school division has not contacted them to set up this meeting.

Sandra suspects it will be up to the three of them to initiate the meeting.

Another unusual aspect of the apology is that the school division did not require confidentiality from the victims.

“They wanted to have their story be told, they wanted to make sure that by sharing what information they could around this that that would help prevent things happening again. So it made sense to the school division to co-operate with that suggestion,” said Bratvold.

Read Part 3 of the series to find out how the women are moving on now that the lawsuit is over.

claskowski@panow.com

On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk