Disgraced doc quits Bombers’ Hall of Fame

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This article was published 18/09/2009 (5917 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE Winnipeg Blue Bombers board of directors was spared from making a tough decision on Thursday when a Hall of Fame member resigned following his conviction for possessing child pornography.

The board had for weeks been under in­tense community pressure to deal with Dr. Ross Brown, the former Bomber president who fell from honour to dishonour on Sept. 2 when he pleaded guilty to possessing more than 5,000 images and 30 videos of children as young as two engaged in ex­plicit sex acts. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail.

The big question for the football board was whether to revoke Brown’s accolades because of criminal convictions that are universally regarded as heinous but were, after all, unrelated to his football accom­plishments.

The question was "uncharted waters" for the board, board chairman Ken Hildahl noted earlier.

The board had asked the Hall of Fame nominating committee to consider Brown’s case and make a recommendation by the end of the month, when the Bomber board would convene to make a decision.

Then, late Thursday afternoon, Brown made it easy for the organization with a surprising resignation from the Hall of Fame.

The offer has been accepted by the club’s directors, the board said in a statement.

Brown did the right thing, a local chil­dren’s rights advocate said.

"He’s done the right thing in recogniz­ing that he’s not the calibre of person that the people of Manitoba can look up to," said Roz Prober, founder of the Winnipeg-based Beyond Borders.

Brown may have pulled the plug himself, she said, but his removal from the hall was inevitable.

"You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be a pillar of the community and be involved in child sexual exploitation," Prober said. "In other words, you can’t be in the hall of fame and on the sex-offender registry at the same time."

In accepting his resignation, the football club erases Brown’s considerable contribu­tions to the Bombers. He was president of the community-owned team in 1988 when the team won the Grey Cup in Ottawa, then stayed on for another year. He first joined the Bombers in 1982 as a member of the board of directors. Brown was also a mem­ber of the 1991 Grey Cup planning commit­tee.

"It’s too bad, in a way, because of all the work he did, the thousands of hours he put in. I’m sorry in that respect," former Bomber coach Cal Murphy said over the phone from Regina. "But at the same time I understand the situation he got himself into."

Murphy and his wife Joyce were among several people who wrote letters of support that were filed in court on Brown’s behalf.

"This is probably for the best for every­one," Murphy said of the resignation.

Brown was vice-president for clinical care in the department of radiology at St. Boniface General Hospital at the time of his October 2006 arrest. He retired a short time later.

Brown’s name first surfaced in June 2006 during an FBI probe of a child- abuse case involving a 12-year-old girl in Georgia. The FBI discovered a website containing mod­elling- type photos of the girl and learned the administrative contact was listed as Ross Brown.

— Staff