Published: Globe and Mail,  December 31, 1984

DEBORAH JONES

 

    KENTVILLE, N.S. -- Cameron Jess returned to Kings County after working with the Canadian International Development Agency in Africa and Asia to find local social conditions "as bad as anything in developing countries.

 

    Here, the poverty cycles have gone on for 200 and 300 years in some families." Mr. Jess, born and raised in Kings County, recalls discussing rural poverty and incest among a group of Tasmanian families with a museum director there. "The director told me there was only one other place in the world he knew of where the problems were similar - in some mountains in Nova Scotia, Canada. "I grew up in these mountains. . . . It's a fascinating place, with power relationships like a Faulkner novel in the deep south, and it's hard for me when I see what people are doing to each other here." For decades, residents of this lush farming area of the Annapolis Valley have known about the incest and extreme poverty which are the everyday reality for some people in the area.

 

    In the past, some residents say, most middle- and upper-class residents simply ostracized such families, turning a blind eye to children with the malformed hands and feet that testify to generations of inbreeding, and shunning the people living in chicken pens and tarpaper shacks.

 

    Recently, however, scandals ranging from sexual abuse of children to allegations of police brutality have broken into the open. In the wake of the storm of publicity the scandals created, critics of the traditional rural establishment hope that things will change.

 

    The child abuse came to light after it was reported that a young girl began hemorrhaging in school and told her teacher she had been sexually abused at home. Social workers and police immediately placed 12 children in the care of the Kings County Family and Children's Services.

 

    In February, in a move that made headlines throughout North America, 13 Kings County men and one woman were charged with more than 100 crimes, including having sexual intercourse with a female under 14, buggery, incest and sexual assault.

 

    Charges were dropped against one man, but 13 adults have been convicted or have pleaded guilty in a Kentville court. Two men have been sentenced - W. J. W. (Billy) Goler to 4 1/2 years on five charges and W. D. (Willy) Goler to seven years on six charges. Sentencing of the others is scheduled for January.

 

    The town of Kentville has also withstood a bitter battle between the town administration and its police force, resulting in a very public, year-long inquiry by the Nova Scotia Police Commission. Following the commission report last summer, the police chief and two constables were fired. The town is still fighting the policemen over payment of their legal bills during the dispute.

 

    The two incidents are merely symptomatic of local administrations hidebound by tradition and insensitive to social problems, Mr. Jess said. "There's a closed upper stratum in this community that likes to remain as ignorant as possible of local problems. We have a powerful establishment that is closely interwoven." Although Mr. Jess intended to return here and set up a food store, he was asked to direct the Kings County Housing Repair Society, an agency that administers some federal housing programs as well as building its own non-profit housing. In the past four years, he acknowledges that he has become a thorn in the side of some local politicians. "If you drive through Kings County on the main roads, the impression is of an affluent area. But if you drive off the road, people are living in tents, broken-down trailers and shacks. A lot of people here are millionaires. Next to them, cheek-by-jowl, are poor people. And in my work, planning housing for low-income people, I'm appalled at the obstacles I have to overcome. "For example, (twice) I tried to buy property for a single parent on welfare who works in (the village of) Canning. In each case, the vendor decided not to let the land go. I ended up buying in Centreville, and the woman will have to commute eight miles to work." Recently, Mr. Jess' criticism has been aimed at municipal councils that refused to help finance a transition house for battered women. "There was tremendous opposition from day one to the idea of a home for battered women here. . . . They say there's no problem," Mr. Jess said.

 

    Barbara Levy, chairman of the Better Environment Kare Association, which is organizing the home, cites a 1983 study that investigated how many local people needed a transition house. "We feel we hit the tip of the iceberg, with 55 women and 125 children responding in just three months. After the study ended, another 10 wrote in. For generations, women have watched their mothers beaten, and the men grew up in families where they were expected to beat their wives." Despite the lack of local approval, the BEKA House received support from the province and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and is scheduled to open within two months, Mrs. Levy says.

 

    In the provincial election this month, Mrs. Levy's husband, Robert Levy, won a seat for the New Democratic Party in the traditionally Conservative riding of Kings South. She said the win proves that local attitudes are changing. "Maybe people don't want to ignore things any more, maybe they're becomimg more interested in social injustice. . . . Look at the Goler family. The whole community knew these families existed, and should have known there was a need for social programs to make sure the children weren't victimized." James Latter, a Kentville reporter who has covered the Goler trials, agreed the problems are nothing new here. His steady stream of front-page stories in the weekly Advertiser about what were called the incest trials has not surprised many people. "A lot of the people are almost titillated by the whole thing, although a lot of them are shocked and dismayed. I think most of the people here have known about it. It's been going on for generations. I think it might be a case of turning a blind eye and not wanting to get involved." Kentville Mayor Wendell Phinney is one of the people dismayed by the trials, and he replies wearily to another reporter's question about local problems: "I think the publicity was overplayed and the media were looking for something that wasn't there." Mayor Phinney said local councils refused to finance the BEKA House because they felt the problem was not large and the money could be used for counselling.

 

    He said that the Goler families live in rural Kings County, but Kentville has borne the brunt of the publicity about the cases "because the courthouse is here. The connotation is that it's happening here. It isn't . . . and people here are fed up to the gills. The problem is a rural problem, not a town problem. . . . And we didn't hear about it." Others also deny that chronic child abuse was being ignored. Garth Gordon, lawyer for Family and Children's Services, said that in 10 years of living here, "I have not known of a history of child sexual abuse among some families, at least it wasn't known to the children's services, or to me." Mr. Gordon added, however, that recent reports of child abuse in this area have become disproportionately high, probably in response to local publicity as well as a provincial Government campaign urging people to report child abuse. "From the last figures I saw, we had 16 per cent of child abuses reported this year in the province. One in eight reports have been from this county." Dr. John Anderson, a Halifax pediatrician, has been spearheading the provincial campaign against child abuse. Incest and child abuse "happens in various pocket areas in the Maritimes and is considered the norm in some families." he said.

 

    Poor housing contributes to the problem, he said. "Severe overcrowding, where you've got large families, is one of the contributors in incest. When you've got dad and mom sleeping with two girls because of overcrowding, sexual things will happen." A housing report by Kings County municipal planner Ron Corbett released last spring identified 1,100 houses as substandard and 239 as not safe for human habitation.

 

    When Mr. Jess was asked in 1980 to join a group of community volunteers concerned about local housing, it had no assets and a $20,000 bank overdraft. It gave him a $5,000 budget for the expenses of forming a society and trying to get Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. support. The project evolved into the Kings County Housing Repair Society, which now administers about $5-million in housing programs a year.

 

    About 140 families have been placed in new housing, 25 shacks have been made liveable and 400 other houses have been repaired, Mr. Jess said. All recipients of housing programs are families with incomes of less than $18,000 a year.

 

    Mr. Jess and volunteer community workers describe some of the houses as one-room chicken sheds with a pipe in the floor for a toilet and tarpaper blocking holes in walls.

 

    More than 30 per cent of Kings County residents earn less than $12,000 a year, Mr. Corbett reported, while some families with four children live on $8,000. "One person's income, who didn't know how to apply for welfare, was as low as $2,000 one year." Some of the people can be helped through CMHC programs, Mr. Jess said. For those who do not qualify for standard programs, Mr. Jess and volunteer community worker Jennifer Foster have developed a unique Little House Program.

 

    The houses, which cost less than $30,000 including land, are built mainly with donated funds, materials and time. Although they are simple, they have running water and insulation and are heated by a wood stove in the kitchen. "I've been criticized for dramatizing the housing problems. People say this is a lovely valley, there's nothing wrong here. I went to a meeting once, and they questioned me: 'Why are you making us look like we're not doing our job?' It's as if I was asking them to take a guilt trip," Mr. Jess said.

 

    Despite years of opposition to his housing programs, however, Mr. Jess said more people are supporting him and he is optimistic that things may change.