Julie Ireton
speaker
251 appearances
10 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jan 2025
Julie Ireton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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She was the youngest of three. She has an older sister, a brother in the middle. They all lived with their mom in public housing. She hardly knew her dad. Anne-Marie attended Eastern High School of Commerce in Toronto's Danforth area. She did well in all her classes, but music was the draw.
What was good about it? What did you enjoy about it?
Her music teacher, Doug Walker. Mr. Walker.
It's clear from photos Anne-Marie was an attractive teenager. She dressed up for band. Our band uniform was a blazer and a shirt.
High school bands demand commitment, practices, classes, concerts, and trips. And those trips are coveted. Kids get away from their parents. They stay in hotels. They play in front of audiences and in competitions. Anne-Marie tells me about one band trip in 1977.
She was 16. They were a few hours drive from home in a city about halfway between Ottawa and Toronto.
Initially, other kids were there in the teacher's hotel room. Then they left.
Anne-Marie's first time would be with her music teacher.
Did any of them suspect what had gone on between you and the teacher?
That story, the teacher being punched by an angry father, would lay the foundation for what came next. She didn't want him to get in trouble.
Anne-Marie says she developed a dependency on him. He told her it was love and at the time she thought she was in love too.
She remembers unwelcome sex with the teacher continued. in his car after practices, on other out-of-town band trips, over and over again. She was 16, above the legal age to consent, and at the time, 1977, no laws prevented a teacher from having sex with his student, if there was consent.
She says she always felt under his control.
And it wasn't just during school time.
The music teacher also introduced Anne-Marie to another band, a professional one.
The Royals is a Canadian military band. It still operates out of Fort York, the historic military site in downtown Toronto. The band parades through the city on special occasions, like this one. This outdoor performance is from a YouTube video in 2015. They wear formal red military uniforms, shiny boots and those big bearskin hats like the guards at Buckingham Palace.
The band sometimes plays for royalty.
But it meant seeing her music teacher all summer, even when school was out. He would drive her to practices and take her home.
She was isolated from her teen friends, and it was the beginning of a profound loneliness that would dog her for decades to come. She needed a father. She needed support, and her teacher was providing flimsy scaffolding. It wasn't really love, and there would be no marriage. He was already living with the woman who would become his current wife, a fellow teacher.
After more than a year of sex on band trips, in cars and in closets, this teenager had to escape. The only way I could get out was to quit high school. She didn't see the teacher again and she didn't graduate.
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