February 3

Events

• Current events

• 1984 - The stigma sticks like peanut butter to molasses - A 15 year old street prostitute named Robert Barry Schaddelee accused youth employment counselor Rob Joyce of paying him for sex. Joyce was fired from his job with the British Columbia Ministry of Human Resources and publicly called an unrepentant child molester by the Minister of Human Resources, Grace McCarthy. Schaddelee then publicly retracted the accusation in a vain attempt to undo the damage after Joyce had lost both his job and his employability. Sadly, the boy then died from an overdose of heroin. The allegations against Joyce was officially determined to be "unsubstantiated," a designation meaning "unresolved" rather than "unfounded," which placed Joyce's name on the provincial Child Abuse Registry and effectively ruined his social service credibility without allowing him to clear his name in the courts. On this date he began the process to rehabilitate his reputation and to reinstate himself with his former employer. In the end the government decided that rumor and innuendo was enough to do nothing to help him.

• 1998 - Round two begins - Mary Kay Letourneau was arrested for violating her probation order on this date. She had been convicted for having sex with 13 year old Vili Fualaau, a boy who had been her student and later who she tutored. She was arrested this second time when she was discovered in her car with the then 14 year old boy. Her probation agreement explicitly barred her from contact with him. The result of that encounter was a seven year sentence and a second pregnancy with Fualaau as the father. Some have called her an evil child molester. Others have called her an ill woman. Still others just say she is a woman in love with a person she is not allowed to love. No matter how anyone sees it, it is a sad story one way or another.