Times The Langley
T u e s d a y ,
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with his
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Andy Bhatti is organizing a poker game to help boys who, like him, have been victim to a sexual predator MONIQUE TAMMINGA Times Reporter
It was 1986, and eight-year-old Andy Bhatti was excited about joining Langley’s Big Brothers program. Being raised by a single mom who struggled to feed and clothe three kids, having a Big Brother was going to fill the void left by an absent father. “I did lots of wonderful things, like go skiing, canoeing, camping, fishing, learned how to play pool,” he said of times with Big Brothers. In 1989, at a Big Brothers Bowl-athon, he bowled on the same team as BC Lions’ Andre Francis (not Bhatti’s abuser). There was an instant friendship. “I invited him to my 10th birthday party and he really came. It was the first time in my childhood I was happy not having a father in my life, because I had a famous BC Lions football player at my house for my birthday,” Bhatti recalls fondly. The defensive back invited Bhatti to watch the Super Bowl at his house. Francis was known for dedicating his time to countless charities. He even purchased a special section in the end zone for Langley’s Little Brothers to watch a game that year. A picture of Bhatti and Francis bowling and having fun appeared in the Langley Times, accompanied by a column written about Francis’ charity work. In the photo, Bhatti is smiling from ear to ear. But shortly after that picture was taken, Francis was traded and Big Brothers of Langley paired Bhatti with a new Big Brother — Joseph Douglas Baker. It would change his life completely — and not for the better. “He was a real nice guy at first,” Bhatti said of Baker, who was in his 20s at the time. “Once the sexual abuse started to happen, I started to feel dirty, ashamed, alone.” Baker took Bhatti to Disneyland and on other trips, sexually abusing him
over four years, from the ages of 10 to 14, when Bhatti ended it. By then, the damage was done. Once the abuse started, Bhatti turned to drugs to escape the pain. He started acting out and getting into fights. He failed Grade 5. He ran away from home, lied, cheated, stole. What’s worse about Bhatti’s story is that when he was about 14 years old his mom sent him to live in foster care. He ran away from those homes, too, so a judge ordered him to live with Baker. “I felt I was sentenced to sexual abuse,” Bhatti said. Eventually he ran away from Baker’s home and was sent back to jail. “Jail seemed safe and better, plus they even had drugs there, too,” wrote Bhatti. By age 16, Bhatti was a full-blown heroin addict and had spent as much time inside a jail cell as out. In his own words, he had become “a monster.” He carried on a life of crime and addiction until he was 27 years old when the police came knocking on his door — not to arrest him but to ask him if he, too, had been abused by Baker. “I knew then I had to speak up because Baker had abused other boys after me,” he said. It was the first time he had told anyone about the abuse. In 2008, Joseph Douglas Baker pleaded guilty to nine counts of sexually assaulting and inviting sexual touching involving three children under the age of 14. The other two victims were six and 10 and lived in Vernon, where Baker lived at the time of the charges laid against him. He was sentenced to three years in jail. He has served his sentence and is now out. “He wanted to live back in Langley,” Bhatti said. “I told the courts ‘no way.’” “I wonder what I could have become if I had never met him,” said Bhatti, who decided to make his story public to spread awareness about male sexual abuse — “a huge problem in B.C. that nobody is talking about,” he stresses.
Monique TAMMINGA/ Langley Times
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Andy Bhatti is hosting a poker fundraiser in Aldergrove on April 6 to raise both awareness about the emotional damage inflicted by sexual predators and money to fund counselling programs.
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