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The Trigger
Between 1977 and 1985, John Oughton conducted an horrendous series of sexual attacks in the Greater Vancouver area.
This predator known as the paper bag rapist often used "finding a lost puppy"; as a ruse to lure children into wooded areas of parks.
Serial killer Ted Bundy used a similar trick, asking for assistance while wearing a fake arm or leg cast in order to gain the sympathy or trust of his potential victims.
John Horace Oughton was dubbed the paper bag rapist because he would place a bag over the head of victims prior to sexually assaulting them, or else wear a mask himself, thereby denying most of his victims any chance of identifying their assailant.
Many of the girls he attacked only saw his face for the first time when he was finally brought to trial.
After he was identified as a possible subject, an undercover policewoman gained entry to his apartment where she saw a pin map on his wall locating his crimes over an area of 1873 square kilometers.
Oughton had intentionally operated over a wide radius in the hopes that he would not reveal any geographic patterns to his crimes. Suspected of committing far more than 100 attacks, Oughton was convicted of 14 counts of sex-related crimes in 1987.
Ever since, as a dangerous offender, the paper bag rapist has had the right to apply for parole every two years. At his appearances in court, Oughton has behaved in a reckless and unrepentant manner, spewing abuse and contempt.
Oughton's next public hearing will be held in July of 2009.
Bi-annual hearings for possible parole have become rallying points for the women and their families whose lives have been irrevocably altered by his heinous crimes.
Among the women who maintained this vigil, and remarkably caused it to gain strength in numbers and solidarity over the years, is Chilean-born playwright, Carmen Aguirre, who grew up in Argentina prior to moving to Vancouver's eastside as a child.
This fall Aguirre will publish The Trigger (Talonbooks $16.95), a play variously described by Jerry Wasserman as "a knockout, intelligent, powerful, funny, horrific, theatrically stunning"; and "utterly free of victimology.";
Wasserman, Vancouver's foremost theatre critic, reviewed the original Touchstone Theatre production of The Trigger in 2005.
"In 1981,"; he wrote, "she's a normal 13-year-old whose adolescent curiosity about sex is expressed through the deep crush she has for Scott Baio on Happy Days.
"Then one unhappy day she and her 12-year-old cousin go into the woods near their school where she's raped at gunpoint by a man whose face she doesn't see....
"In the immediate aftermath she suffers pain, shock, shame, guilt, unsympathetic cops, and a father who insists she never talk about it again. But her intelligence and adolescent resilience enable her to make some sense of her experience and bounce back.
"The cops eventually become helpful, too. But most important to Carmen is the legacy of her Chilean family's radical politics. Something bad happened to her, yes, but it wasn't so horrible.
"Horrible is when you're tortured by [Augusto] Pinochet's fascists, or when someone you love is murdered or disappeared. She can't feel sorry for herself. It would be bourgeois.
"That strength takes her, and the audience, to a very healthy place in the end. The women celebrate their victory and I celebrate this marvelous show.";
Carmen Aguirre has provided her own version of how and why the play had to be written.
"When I was thirteen I was raped by the paper bag rapist. I was with my younger cousin at the time, and neither one of us ever saw him-he used a paper bag to cover his own head or those of his victims.
"Not that we would have seen him anyway; a gun was held to the backs of our heads and if we turned around he'd kill us.
"He only had one bullet left, he said, so he'd have to chop up my cousin while I watched, then shoot me. By the time the attack was over and we were left lying in the mud, we were both different people.
"I had wanted to write a play about this experience for years; propelled by my anger at how often rape was portrayed in a titillating, shocking, gratuitous way on screen or stage. Rapists were evil and the victims were only that: victims.
"But, how would I stage it? How would I tell the story? Why would I tell this story? After a decade of chewing over these questions, the image of a young tree lying on its side came to me. A man was chopping an axe through its centre. A girl in a harness spun out of control above him. The sound of their breathing filled the space. The seed for The Trigger was planted.
"The Trigger is for the 170 victims of the paper bag rapist, their families, the communities affected by this predator, and every human being who has ever been sexually violated and lives with that experience in their core, which comes to the surface in intimate relationships, because, let's face it, when one is raped, there is physical intimacy with the attacker.
"The Trigger deals with the ripples of this kind of violation.";
At age 40, now a single mom with a two-year-old son, still living in Vancouver's eastside, Carmen Aguirre is doing just fine as a very successful theatre and television actor and writer.
Among her 30 credits for stage and screen, Aguirre had a lead role in the independent feature Quinceaáera, winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, an Independent Spirit award, GLAAD awards and various People's Choice awards at festivals around the world.
A founder and director of The Latino Theatre Group, Aguirre was playwright-in-residence at The Vancouver Playhouse from 2000 to 2002, playwright-in-residence at Touchstone Theatre in 2004, and facilitates Theatre of the Oppressed workshops around the province.
Aguirre is currently writing a memoir, to be called Something Fierce, about her militancy within the Chilean resistance during the U.S.-supported dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
As for the paper bag rapist, he will likely spend the rest of life in jail. Psychiatric assessments have repeatedly concluded he remains a high risk for re-offending.
Bizarrely, he is registered in National Library records as the author of a self-published memoir: Mountain thoughts: an inmate's journey towards self-knowledge by John Horace Oughton-Vancouver: J.H. Oughton, 1999.
There is no evidence of his purported manuscript ever being made commercially available. 978-0-88922-591-6
[BCBW 2008] "Theatre" "Rape"
This predator known as the paper bag rapist often used "finding a lost puppy"; as a ruse to lure children into wooded areas of parks.
Serial killer Ted Bundy used a similar trick, asking for assistance while wearing a fake arm or leg cast in order to gain the sympathy or trust of his potential victims.
John Horace Oughton was dubbed the paper bag rapist because he would place a bag over the head of victims prior to sexually assaulting them, or else wear a mask himself, thereby denying most of his victims any chance of identifying their assailant.
Many of the girls he attacked only saw his face for the first time when he was finally brought to trial.
After he was identified as a possible subject, an undercover policewoman gained entry to his apartment where she saw a pin map on his wall locating his crimes over an area of 1873 square kilometers.
Oughton had intentionally operated over a wide radius in the hopes that he would not reveal any geographic patterns to his crimes. Suspected of committing far more than 100 attacks, Oughton was convicted of 14 counts of sex-related crimes in 1987.
Ever since, as a dangerous offender, the paper bag rapist has had the right to apply for parole every two years. At his appearances in court, Oughton has behaved in a reckless and unrepentant manner, spewing abuse and contempt.
Oughton's next public hearing will be held in July of 2009.
Bi-annual hearings for possible parole have become rallying points for the women and their families whose lives have been irrevocably altered by his heinous crimes.
Among the women who maintained this vigil, and remarkably caused it to gain strength in numbers and solidarity over the years, is Chilean-born playwright, Carmen Aguirre, who grew up in Argentina prior to moving to Vancouver's eastside as a child.
This fall Aguirre will publish The Trigger (Talonbooks $16.95), a play variously described by Jerry Wasserman as "a knockout, intelligent, powerful, funny, horrific, theatrically stunning"; and "utterly free of victimology.";
Wasserman, Vancouver's foremost theatre critic, reviewed the original Touchstone Theatre production of The Trigger in 2005.
"In 1981,"; he wrote, "she's a normal 13-year-old whose adolescent curiosity about sex is expressed through the deep crush she has for Scott Baio on Happy Days.
"Then one unhappy day she and her 12-year-old cousin go into the woods near their school where she's raped at gunpoint by a man whose face she doesn't see....
"In the immediate aftermath she suffers pain, shock, shame, guilt, unsympathetic cops, and a father who insists she never talk about it again. But her intelligence and adolescent resilience enable her to make some sense of her experience and bounce back.
"The cops eventually become helpful, too. But most important to Carmen is the legacy of her Chilean family's radical politics. Something bad happened to her, yes, but it wasn't so horrible.
"Horrible is when you're tortured by [Augusto] Pinochet's fascists, or when someone you love is murdered or disappeared. She can't feel sorry for herself. It would be bourgeois.
"That strength takes her, and the audience, to a very healthy place in the end. The women celebrate their victory and I celebrate this marvelous show.";
Carmen Aguirre has provided her own version of how and why the play had to be written.
"When I was thirteen I was raped by the paper bag rapist. I was with my younger cousin at the time, and neither one of us ever saw him-he used a paper bag to cover his own head or those of his victims.
"Not that we would have seen him anyway; a gun was held to the backs of our heads and if we turned around he'd kill us.
"He only had one bullet left, he said, so he'd have to chop up my cousin while I watched, then shoot me. By the time the attack was over and we were left lying in the mud, we were both different people.
"I had wanted to write a play about this experience for years; propelled by my anger at how often rape was portrayed in a titillating, shocking, gratuitous way on screen or stage. Rapists were evil and the victims were only that: victims.
"But, how would I stage it? How would I tell the story? Why would I tell this story? After a decade of chewing over these questions, the image of a young tree lying on its side came to me. A man was chopping an axe through its centre. A girl in a harness spun out of control above him. The sound of their breathing filled the space. The seed for The Trigger was planted.
"The Trigger is for the 170 victims of the paper bag rapist, their families, the communities affected by this predator, and every human being who has ever been sexually violated and lives with that experience in their core, which comes to the surface in intimate relationships, because, let's face it, when one is raped, there is physical intimacy with the attacker.
"The Trigger deals with the ripples of this kind of violation.";
At age 40, now a single mom with a two-year-old son, still living in Vancouver's eastside, Carmen Aguirre is doing just fine as a very successful theatre and television actor and writer.
Among her 30 credits for stage and screen, Aguirre had a lead role in the independent feature Quinceaáera, winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, an Independent Spirit award, GLAAD awards and various People's Choice awards at festivals around the world.
A founder and director of The Latino Theatre Group, Aguirre was playwright-in-residence at The Vancouver Playhouse from 2000 to 2002, playwright-in-residence at Touchstone Theatre in 2004, and facilitates Theatre of the Oppressed workshops around the province.
Aguirre is currently writing a memoir, to be called Something Fierce, about her militancy within the Chilean resistance during the U.S.-supported dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
As for the paper bag rapist, he will likely spend the rest of life in jail. Psychiatric assessments have repeatedly concluded he remains a high risk for re-offending.
Bizarrely, he is registered in National Library records as the author of a self-published memoir: Mountain thoughts: an inmate's journey towards self-knowledge by John Horace Oughton-Vancouver: J.H. Oughton, 1999.
There is no evidence of his purported manuscript ever being made commercially available. 978-0-88922-591-6
[BCBW 2008] "Theatre" "Rape"
Submitted on September 5, 2008 in By David.
