Canadian Director Seeks Class-Action Lawsuit Against Montreal Suburb Over Hockey Coach’s Alleged Sex Abuse

A Canadian director is mounting a potential class action lawsuit against a wealthy Montreal suburb for allegedly allowing a hockey coach to abuse young boys for more than 30 years while the coach was a city employee. In a motion for class action certification filed Friday in the Quebec Superior Court, Matthew Bissonnette alleges City of Westmount employees knew the coach was abusing him and at least three other children he knows of, but they did nothing.

Bissonnette wants $100,000 in psychological damages for the trauma he experienced, and he's inviting others who suffered abuse to join his lawsuit.

John Garland, who died in 2012, was a coach at the city's parks and recreation department from 1953 to 1987 and was a "familiar face in Westmount" who would each year pick his favourite boys on the hockey team to dote upon, Bissonette's court motion reads. City employees called them "Johnny's Pets," the motion adds.

At the time, the city's recreation centre managed 40 hockey teams with 600 kids, his court document says. On Monday, Bissonnette told VICE Garland allowed him and his other favourites special access to his locker, where the other kids weren't allowed. He would also take the boys out to dinner and to his apartment, where "soda, junk food, pool, darts, and video games were readily available."

City employees "could easily witness" the boys getting into Garland's car since their office windows overlooked the parking lot, but they did nothing, Bissonnette alleges in his motion.

In 1978, when Bissonnette was 12, his coach began making sexual advances toward him, he claims in court documents. At his apartment, Garland asked him to sit on his lap in a reclining chair while he hugged him and rocked back and forth.

The coach soon began massaging Bissonnette on his couch, and would touch his genitals and masturbate him. According to the director's court motion, the coach called these sessions "warm ups," implying they would help him prepare for hockey games.

"These home visits were common knowledge among department participants and employees," he alleges. "No responsible adult could have failed to consider that Garland's relationship with these boys was inappropriate."

The abuse, which included emotional manipulation and gifts, continued until Bissonnette was 14. He started to resist the coach's advances, and stopped visiting his apartment.

He remembers those years as "terrifying," "shameful," and "alienating."

"No one's around, no one's going to help you, no one's going to stop this," he told VICE, describing how he felt at the time.

As a result of the coach's actions, Bissonnette told VICE he began self medicating, first with alcohol, weed, acid, speed, and mescaline, then later with cocaine, vicoden, percocet, and ambien. "It was sort of an escalation," he said. "What you see with self-medication in my experience is it works and then it stops working."

Bissonnette told VICE that, in the spring of 1993, while he was a law student at Queen's University and was still heavily using drugs, he'd worked up the nerve to file a criminal complaint against Garland with Westmount police, and a detective began investigating his case. But later that year, the court motion says, the detective left a message with Bissonnette's roommate saying there wasn't enough evidence to charge Garland, and police were dropping the case.

The detective said Garland had maintained his innocence and threatened to sue for defamation. According to the director's court filings, police knew the hockey coach and didn't believe Bissonnette's story, the detective told him.

'[The detective] stated that [Bissonnette], as a first year law student, was knowledgeable of civil litigation and was fabricating the abuse in the hope of financial gain."

For a decade Bissonnette played a movie in his head imagining he would tell everyone and it would get fixed, he told VICE. So when he finally told police and they thought he had fabricated the story, he says it was "completely shocking."

"I couldn't believe it, and it was heartbreaking."

He told VICE his reaction at the time was: "Fuck these people, fuck the city of Westmount. If they want to protect and coddle a pedophile, and that's the kind of world that they're building for themselves, I'm done with these people."

The police were the only professional entity he sought help from at that time, the court documents state, and they "turned their back on [him] at the moment when he needed them most."

In 2002, nearly 10 years after he tried going to police, Bissonnette started seeing a therapist and realized the full weight of the abuse and both the city and police's response to it.

In 2012, the sexual abuse of former NHL player Theoren Fleury by his coach dominated headlines and Bissonnette again decided to approach police. But police told him there was no record of his complaint. A freedom of information request by his lawyer confirmed that was true.

But in 2012, before Bissonnette could bring charges against his former coach, Garland died.

For years, Garland repeated the same pattern of behaviour with all the boys he singled out for abuse, Bissonnette's lawyer, Bruce Johnston, told VICE Monday. Johnston argues that as a city employee, the city is liable for his behavior.

"Westmount was the employer of Mr. Garland and as employer, in law, the city of Westmount is legally responsible for the faults committed by Mr. Garland, who was in the employ of the city and was acting within the confines of his mandate. He had contact with these children because he was an employee of the city of Westmount, and as such the city of Westmount is liable for the faults of its employee."

There were clear signs that the city should have seen that should have led them to intervene, he added.

The City of Westmount declined to comment on the lawsuit.

"The Westmount Police was disbanded in 1973," Westmount's current Mayor Peter Trent told Maclean's. "They are trying to say we had something to do with his plea in 1993, when of course Westmount Police didn't exist. It was called the Montreal Urban Community police that was run by Montreal, and Westmount had no control whatsoever over the police at the station."

A judge has not yet certified the suit as a class action. Westmount has not yet filed a statement of defense. That's to be expected as the action was filed on Friday, Johnston said.

As a result of the alleged abuse, Bissonnette explained to VICE, he used drugs as a crutch for 30 years. It was only through therapy and the birth of his son, now eight years old, that he realized he was abusing drugs because of the sexual abuse he suffered.

He's been clean for a year and four months.

As part of his recovery, he's changed his view of the city employees he says allowed the abuse to happen. He understands people make mistakes and that doesn't make them bad people. "It just means you made a mistake, and what you do is you acknowledge it and then you make it right."

Bissonnette lives in LA and has directed art films including Who Loves the Sun, Passenger Side, and Looking for Leonard.

With files from Joseph Elfassi.

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