David Mistry and Rahm Sharpe-Bebe are now 50 years old and good friends. This was not always the case.
As Leaside youngsters, they both participated in local sports but didn’t really know each other. As teens, they weren’t friends at all and occasionally even got into fights.
But what brought them together were shared experiences that changed their lives forever.
Rahm came forward when he was 37 to accuse Ed Palacios of sexual assault when he was just a child. David was on the TTC on his way to work at Scarborough General Hospital as an operating room technician when he saw a newspaper article with the accusation in black and white.
He too had been abused by Ed Palacios but didn’t know of any others in his situation and had never spoken of what had taken place.
David’s mother had questioned him about the possibility of abuse when he was a child, but David lied and said, “everything was fine,” because he really didn’t know how to talk about this sort of thing to his parents. In fact, it turns out, he never told anyone, not until he saw the newspaper article that changed his life.
Rahm had also originally lied to his mom, but did later tell a girlfriend and his mother when he was in his 20s. It wasn’t until he read Theo Fleury’s book on his abuse as a hockey player, Playing with Fire, and then met him at an event at Originals on Bayview that he decided the time had come to become a survivor, not a victim. As Rahm said, “survivors speak out, and victims stay silent.”
He went to the police, the accusations against Ed Palacios became public, and others who had been sexually assaulted by him were asked to come forward. David was one of them. Six others also came forward and testified at the trial where Ed Palacios was convicted.
Why are David and Rahm now, many years after the events, asking for Leaside Life to reveal their names and their story? Ed Palacios has been charged again, with a trial coming this month, and with others making similar accusations from that same period more than four decades ago, in 1983, when they were kids. Another man, Sean Hancock, is also being charged at this trial.
Edward Palacios, 64, was charged with three counts of sexual assault, two counts of gross indecency, assault, buggery and assault with a weapon, Toronto police said in a news release in March. Sean Hancock, 59, was charged with sexual assault, gross indecency, assault and buggery. Palacios and Hancock both volunteered in programs in Leaside, where they had access to children. Palacios has also been charged with possession of and access to child pornography. He is scheduled to appear at the Ontario Court of Justice on June 11.
Rahm and David want “men and women who have been sexually assaulted to not be afraid, and to not be alone. As scary as it is to speak out, it’s healthier than trying to hold it in,” David said. Therapy as adults has helped them, but both say that mental health supports are hard to access in the public system, and expensive if privately obtained.
Anyone with information is asked to contact police or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers.
