A Surrey man claims the director of a summer camp sexually abused him as a child

A Surrey man has filed a lawsuit alleging he was sexually abused as a young boy while attending an overnight summer camp in Metro Vancouver in the 1980s.

The lawsuit, filed last week in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, alleges that Camp Capilano’s director in the 1970s and ’80s, John “Jack” Frederick Way, was prone to pedophilic sexual desires and took advantage of the lawsuit’s plaintiff when he was about nine years old.

Way died in 2014. None of the allegations against him have been proven in court.

The plaintiff, identified in court documents as CC#1, says he visited Camp Capilano in North Vancouver in about 1987 as part of an overnight trip organized by Scouts Canada and the United Church of Canada. Both groups, as well as the Metro Vancouver Regional District and the City of Vancouver, are named as negligent parties in the lawsuit alongside Way.

CC#1 alleges that the defendants knew or should have known that Way “exhibited a pattern or habitual predatory behavior by gaining access to male children attending Camp Capilano, isolating those children, and sexually abusing those children.” “.

On the trip he took to Camp Capilano as a young boy, plaintiff said Way groped his naked body, pressed his erect penis against CC#1’s back and held him down. The plaintiff claims he was also forced to urinate in a bucket.

“Way’s abuse constitutes assault, battery, trespass, intentional infliction of mental suffering, and breach of fiduciary duty,” the lawsuit states.

The plaintiff says that as a result of this experience, he suffered from, among other things, post-traumatic stress disorder, severe shame, an inability to trust others, and symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount for the plaintiff’s damages, loss of past and future earning capacity and health care costs.

None of the defendants, including Way, Scouts Canada, the United Church of Canada, the Metro Vancouver Regional District or the City of Vancouver, have filed a response to the lawsuit as of publication time, and none of the allegations described in the lawsuit have been proven in court .

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