Posted on 02/14/2003 8:18:30 AM PST by Loyalist
Judge blasts villagers in sentencing
Blaming the seven women who accused former mayor of sexual assault 'worst kind of enabling': Groped seven women
OUTLOOK, Sask. - As the former mayor of tiny Elbow, Sask., was sentenced yesterday to house arrest for molesting seven village women, the judge peered down at Donald Maxwell's legion of supporters and cast judgment on their role in the sordid affair.
For months, Maxwell, his friends and his fellow Lutheran churchgoers have minimized the wrong in Maxwell's repeated attacks on the women, mostly mothers in their 40s and 50s. For seven years, he took advantage of his position as the most respected citizen in his village to grope, caress and accost the women.
Maxwell pleaded guilty to 11 counts of sexual assault and was sentenced yesterday to nine months of house arrest, followed by 27 months of probation. His sentence includes a curfew, an order that he undergo sex offender therapy and "gender-awareness education."
In Elbow, a village of 300, friendships have ended, schoolyard fights have broken out and the women continue to hear whispers behind their backs. "The biggest thing is that you don't know what people are saying about you," said one of the women. "Because of one person's indiscretion, we feel like we're the guilty party."
After suffering in silence for years, the women complained to police last summer. They were dismissed as jealous and vindictive troublemakers by dozens of townspeople. The RCMP took the unprecedented step of issuing a letter to townspeople, dismissing rumours and defending the "honesty and professionalism" of their investigation.
"It wasn't as far as dividing the town into warring camps, but it was getting close to that," said Judge Robert Jackson of the Saskatchewan Provincial Court, as most of the 40 people who packed the courtroom stared at their shoes.
"Some of you act as if it's the women who are to blame. Some have suggested that someone put the victims up to it, that they had some hidden agenda or ulterior motive. This is the worst kind of enabling of Mr. Maxwell's behaviour. In many aspects it is because of you that he has been able to carry on this facade. Mr. Maxwell, you have a dark side that has not been addressed."
As the judge spoke, two of Mr. Maxwell's victims stood in the aisle surveying the crowd, flanked by their husbands. The women were denied a seat at the sentencing.
Maxwell, 47, was a two-term mayor who brought a million-dollar sewage facility to the lakeside village of Elbow, 80 kilometres south of Saskatoon. An electrical contractor, Maxwell could always be counted on for free emergency electrical work around town. A married father of two, he chipped in a hundred dollars a month to help a local girl attend university.
Behind the scenes, however, Maxwell repeatedly touched and grabbed the buttocks and breasts of three women who worked in the town office, and the wives of friends. In a typical episode, he came upon a clerk leaning over a map on a table in the village council chambers. He slid past the woman, gently caressing her bottom and then continuing through the room.
In one summertime incident, he groped a woman while she bent over to open the Popsicle he bought for her son.
Maxwell asked another woman to drop by his office to pick up a get-well card for her ailing husband, who was also his friend. When she did, he groped her.
"I was on the death bed, and he's groping my wife," said the woman's husband, who recovered from his illness, outside the courthouse.
Several times he invited couples to view the house he was building. When the men weren't looking, he'd brush past the women, feeling their buttocks or breasts. Maxwell went on to other stealthy attacks in the grocery store, the community rink, at a banquet, a greenhouse, and on the women's own doorsteps. In the town office, gropes took place by filing cabinets, the photocopier and the front counter.
Each time, the victim's reaction was similar: "I couldn't believe it. I mean, he was the mayor. I thought I'd imagined it at first. Then it would happen again."
After the prosecutor described at least two dozen assaults yesterday, two of Maxwell's friends from the community testified to his character.
Jack Sailor described Maxwell as "congenial, community-minded and a helpful gentleman. He is a man of character and integrity." He spoke at length about the suffering Maxwell and his family have endured because of the accusations against him. He lost his electrical contractor job over the scandal, as well as his mayor's title.
Peter Tonner described Maxwell, who resigned from the mayor's post in December, as "the best mayor we've ever had."
The victims and their husbands seethed. "P---," one husband muttered. In their victim-impact statements, the women asked that Maxwell get treatment, saying they did not want him jailed. The judge commended them for their leniency.
Just before the sentence was passed, Maxwell apologized.
"You are a person who clearly doesn't get it," the judge told him.
© Copyright 2003 National Post
He didn't grope any men, did he? He seems to be aware of the differences...
I didn't know there was a limit.
Shouldn't that be 'P----'?
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