Former U of S staffer probes the
Martensville daycare trials
Frann Harris, who was the director of the Centre for
Second Language Instruction from 1982-88 and who now lives in
Weston, ON, has written a 317-page book that delves into the
notorious Martensville daycare trials that took place in Saskatoon from
the spring of 1993 to the spring of 1994.
In Martensville: Truth or Justice? (The Dundurn Group,
Toronto, 1998), Harris conducts a personal examination of the alleged
sexual abuse in Martensville that led to the longest trial in the
province's history.
The more than 150 charges laid in connection with the
allegations resulted in two major trials and four convictions, two of
which were overturned on appeal.
The book is apt to leave readers wondering whether justice
and truth are, in such cases, mutually exclusive and whether either
can be found.
Harris says she wrote the book - her first - to
increase public awareness of how a criminal trial unfolds and
to extract lessons from the singular difficulties attending
children's courtroom testimony and cross-examination.
The book also contains commentary by Sheldon
Kennedy, the professional hockey player who suffered sexual abuse by
his coach in Swift Current in the '80s. Kennedy talks about
the pain of sexual abuse and the lifelong scars it may leave
and about the difficulty of disclosing childhood abuse.
Martensville: Truth or Justice? is available in the Bookstore
at $24.99 (paper).
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