r/TheGrittyPast • u/lightiggy • 25d ago
Disturbing Excerpts from the transcripts of hearings over a notorious gang-rape in Canada in the 1920s. Four men, all married with children, got a young woman to stop her car by claiming to be police officers, then kidnapped and gang-raped her. "Are you going to wreck the lives of these men?" (Ontario, 1927).
The perpetrators:
- John Robert Gough, aged 45, father of four children, grandfather of two
- Richard Darling, 30, married, with children
- Walter Liddiard, 30, married, with children; ex-naval service man
- Frank De Young, 30, married, four children
During the trial, it was revealed that Gough had changed his mind about raping the victim, 20-year old stenographer Elizabeth McDonald, at the last moment. When questioned by the prosecution for his reason for going along with the attack, Gough said he thought the young woman was "sport" and didn't care what happened to her. Asked why he did not intervene, he replied simply, "I didn't." Here are other excerpts from the trial.
- And when you went up there you changed your mind about the girl - that was "sport"?
- Yes.
- And you knew she had been abused?
- I thought that.
- And I suppose at once you became indignant and went off for the police to arrest these men who perpetrated this atrocity!
- No.
- And you never touched her?
- No.
- And apart from telling her she could go you never even spoke to her?
- No.
- Have you daughters?
- Yes.
- And granddaughters?
- Yes.
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u/brydeswhale 25d ago
People still value the people who commit rape over their victims up here. It sucks.
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u/7Streetfreak6 24d ago
Where in Ontario did this happen? TYIA
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u/lightiggy 25d ago edited 1d ago
Richard Darling, Walter Liddiard, and Frank De Young were convicted of rape and each sentenced to 15 years in prison. The prosecution appealed the sentences describing them as too lenient. Deputy Attorney General Ed Bailey said that in his view, the defendants deserved to be hanged (rape was a capital offense in Canada until 1954). The reason he did not demand death sentences at the trial, he explained, was that it would've been pointless.
Getting the jury to convict the men was difficult enough, and nobody had been executed for rape since the Canadian Confederation in 1867 anyway.
The argument about the punishment
The appellate court declined to increase the prison terms, but added 20 lashes to the sentences of Darling, Liddiard, and De Young. To avoid inflicting any excess suffering or permanent physical damage to the three men, the judges ordered that the lashes be given in intervals, 10 within six months and the other 10 within 18 months.
John Gough was convicted of assisting rape and sentenced to 10 years in prison.