I had probably one of the most eye-opening and disturbing days of my life covering the Rick Buis case at the Provincial court house Tuesday.
The case has been one we’ve been following all year. It hits really close to home, given that Buis is a former vice-president of this college and he is in our community. What has amazed me about this case has been how easy it is to sexually abuse young children without ever leaving one’s home.
Buis had the child porn downloaded from Limewire. Sort of makes you rethink how these programs are in existence and what sort of people use them, and why the government wants them shut down. This far exceeds any copyright infringement.
These kids are re-victimized every time someone sees that video or the images. Figuratively, they are raped again and again, forced into things that aren’t their choice; all done with the click of a mouse and a download button.
A somewhat similar case I have been following has been of convicted sex offender Graham James. The similarities from both men are sickening.
Not many things disturb me. But I almost had to leave the court room with details from the Buis case. These were kids as young as one and perhaps even younger. An eight-year-old mimicked a suicide attempt during one of the videos, according to Calgary Special Prosecutor Tess Jones.
What human beings will do to hurt someone else can be astounding and horrifying. But the torture that kids go through when they become victims of sexual assault is another kind of horror.
It’s something that shakes me down to the core so much that although I bought Theo Fleury’s book, “Playing With Fire,” I have yet to read it because I know that those boys were only 14 years-old and dreaming of the NHL. While chasing those dreams, they were sexually abused by the coach they were supposed to trust over 350 times over several years.
I know that Fleury spiralled down into drugs, alcohol and many twisted places before pulling himself out. He became an inspiration story instead of another suicide statistic. The details of all this are in the book.
I’ve had it on my shelf since December 2009. There’s always that part of the human mind that doesn’t want to know these monsters lurk among vulnerable children.
Buis himself has a two-year old granddaughter. What went through his mind when he was watching these videos is unfathomable given the fact that someone the same age as those little girls who were being raped was at times in his own house.
By my own observations in the court room, two things caught my attention. His wife wouldn’t look him in the eye. When Buis talked to her, she would wring her hands and look away. It’s hard to imagine what this high-profile, small-city case has been like for her and the family.
The second observation was how rattled Buis’s lawyer, Balfour Der seemed after Jones described the vivid details of what was on Buis’s computers. Jones herself got slightly choked, referring to the case as “high spectrum” in nature.
This world is full of demented, evil things. Logically, we know that. Sometimes, though, it takes being grabbed unexpectedly by the shoulders and shaken awake from the illusion of a perfect dreamland to see how dark the truth really is.
I was awakened to just that.