By Jane Sims, Sun Media THE LONDON FREE PRESS Wednesday, February 13, 2008 Canada -
For hours, three boys stood military-style -- shoulders back, feet together, thumbs along their pant seams. Their teacher was Royden Wood, their London church pastor and leader, whom they dared not disrespect. Wood cheerily referred to the boys, 12 to 14 at the time, as "the Three Stooges." He sometimes slapped them playfully on the face and pulled them out of the congregation on Sundays at the Ambassador Baptist Church to show members the success of his "self- control training program." "We were statues. We had been trained not to move," one boy, now 35, testified in a London court yesterday.
That control, Crown attorney Peter Kierluk said as he laid out the prosecution's case, grew out of excessive physical abuse involving assaults with fists and pliers, forced running of 50 to 60 laps around the church block and standing at attention for the entire school day at the church's short-lived alternative school. The testimony and Kierluk's opening remarks were an explosive start to an expected two-week trial for Wood on assault and sex-related charges that delve into what was happening inside the now disbanded church at King and Adelaide streets. Wood, head pastor starting in 1982, is defending himself. He pleaded not guilty to 13 charges -- 10 of assault between 1985 and 1987 involving the three boys and two of sexual assault and one of sexual interference involving two women who contend their breasts were fondled.
The sex charges point to "alleged odd practices in the church," Kierluk said in the trial before a judge alone. One practice, known as the "Ambassador Handshake," involved fondling women's breasts as they were greeted at church, Kierluk said. "There was a great deal of hugging going on in the congregation." He said one complainant maintains she was talking to Wood in 2002 when she was touched. Wood made a comment about her breast size and made it clear he was familiar with the breast sizes of other parishioners, Kierluk said. The other female complainant was a minor between 1998 and 2003 when Wood, on a couple of occasions, reached out and hooked his fingers in the front of her bra and lifted it above her breasts, Kierluk told the court.
Much of yesterday was spent on testimony by the 35-year-old man, his identity protected by court order. He testified he was one of about a dozen students pulled out of their elementary schools after church authorities grew dissatisfied with the schools and enrolled at the church's alternative school. It ran out of the church basement from about 1985 to 1987. The students were basically self-taught, he testified. They sat in cubicles and used workbooks, then gave themselves exams. If they had a question, they were to raise their flag from their cubicle. There were no report cards. He said they had three teachers before Wood took over.
Wood, he said, singled them out for talking, laughing, giggling and looking out from the cubicles. He devised a self-control program that included ordering the boys to stand at attention, sometimes from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Later, it included more discipline at his home -- reading Scripture and standing. If they weren't standing, they were running dozens of laps around the block, he said. Alternately, he said, they were ordered each day to run to a coffee shop to fetch fresh doughnuts. If not brought back warm, there'd be more standing and Wood would hit them in the chest under the ribs with his knuckle, causing the boys to lose their breath, or punch them in the shoulders. "Roy's knuckles would get so red. So, he switched to a pair of vice grips," he testified. The abuse, he said, escalated to include plucking facial hair from the boys with pliers.