No criminals allowed in hall of fame: Blue Bombers

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This article was published 29/09/2009 (5847 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG – The Winnipeg Blue Bombers hall of fame selection committee has delivered a recommendation to the team that anyone convicted of an indictable offence be immediately removed from the hall.

The decision announced today comes after a former team president and hall of fame member Ross Brown resigned after being convicted of possessing child pornography.

Brown 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.

“On receiving notice that a member of the Winnipeg Football Club Hall of Fame has been convicted of an indictable offence under the Criminal Code of Canada, the Board shall terminate the membership in the Hall of Fame by notice to be sent by registered mail to that member’s last known address upon the third business day following the date of mailing that notice,” the team’s new policy states.

“The Board is pleased and appreciative of the recommendation which has been brought forth by the Selection Committee. We take this situation very seriously and appreciate the patience of our fans in this matter. This decision will continue to reinforce the high standards which all members of the Hall of Fame shall be subject to”, said Chairman of the Board Ken Hildahl.

The question was initially “uncharted waters” for the board, Hildahl noted after the story first broke.

Brown made it easy for the organization with a resignation from the Hall of Fame.

“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.

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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 erased 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.

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.