My name is Michelle Prentice. I was the wife of Guthrie Prentice, the eldest grandson of Alison Leeds-Prentice. I am the mother of the great-grandchild of Alison Leeds-Prentice. And right now, due to massive police and governmental oversight, I am the only thing standing between these two people and the utter destruction caused by a coward and her serial child-molester of a son.

Born on July 8th, 1934 in Delaware, Alison moved to Canada in 1939 where she lived the rest of her life. She earned her PhD from the University of Toronto, and founded the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education in Ontario. In 1998, she became a member of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2013, she became a member of the order of Canada. She literally wrote the book on Women’s History. However, Alison was not a feminist. Rather, Alison was a shining example of why one should never meet their heroes.

The first red flag was when Guthrie and I were first talking about moving in together. Alison wanted an informal agreement signed between us, outlining rules and responsibilities. This was odd, but I was about to move in with someone several economic classes above me, I assumed this was going to be for everyone’s protection. Oh, how wrong I was...Alison included a number of concerning clauses, the most shocking of which being “Guthrie will get a vasectomy before the move in date.” Guthrie seemed concerned by this clause, but didn’t seem to want to speak up...so I did. “Do you want a vasectomy?” I asked. “No. I haven’t decided on kids yet. I wanted to wait a few years and then decide.” “Then we aren’t going to sign this. You have just as much right to bodily autonomy as I do.” Alison revised the agreement, this time to have it state that “all non-permanent methods of contraception will be used, up to and including abortion.” I crossed this line out and revised it myself. “All non-permanent methods of contraception will be employed, and if pregnancy should happen anyway a conversation with medical and mental health professionals will be had regarding ALL options, including but not limited to adoption, abortion, and parenting, and the choice will be made with the best interest of the health, well-being, and bodily autonomy of all parties in mind.” Alison did not send this agreement back again. (there was a formal cohabitation agreement signed later, with lawyers involved, and I cannot speak on that as it pertains to my current divorce proceedings)

Years later, when Alison brought up this agreement out of context, I asked her point-blank why she’d written that, and that I thought it was odd that something so anti-feminist had come from her especially. Her claim was that it was not anti-feminist, because she was trying to protect me from having children too young (Bear in mind that I was 25 years old and Guthrie was 28 when we moved in together, and at this point I was approaching 30). “So, infantalizing another woman is somehow feminist, then?” Suddenly, she was tired and Guthrie and I needed to leave.

Other red flags included the time that I found I was having trouble navigating public transit due to my mobility issues stemming from a severe car accident. I saved $3000 of my own money over several months to buy an old Volkswagen off a friend of mine. Alison, who forbade Guthrie from getting a job and instead gave him a monthly allowance (yes, this is in fact considered financial abuse, thank you for noticing), threatened to cut off Guthrie’s income until the car was “repaid in full.” Remember: Guthrie was not involved in the purchase of the car in ANY way. It was entirely my own limited income that paid for that vehicle, kept it insured, kept it filled with diesel, and paid the mechanic bills that come with owning a 30+ year old car. Alison was constantly trying to dictate Guthrie’s social life, including calling him once while we were at a friend’s house playing Pathfinder and demanding that he go home right that second and study. A 34 year old adult university physics student, being yelled at like a middle school boy by his grandmother for taking one night a week off, in front of a group of friends including his fiancee. I told her that night that she was the reason Guthrie has anxiety. I maintain that I was not wrong, now matter how much everyone guilt tripped me for making her cry. She loved to turn on the waterworks whenever she was challenged, especially when it was by people beneath her. And, I was beneath her. I grew up in Ohio, in a lower working-class family, and I had, through a series of both circumstance and poor decision making, not been able to escape the cycle of poverty when I experienced a car accident literally two weeks after meeting Guthrie for the first time. I was working several part-time and piecework jobs, including delivering newspapers despite severe pain that made every step feel like I had ground glass in my hips (it turned out that I had been injured far worse in my accident than the hospital had acknowledged, but that’s a story for another day.) After taking a series of falls directly related to medical negligence after my accident, I found myself in need of wheelchair assistance whenever I left home as I could no longer bear weight on my left leg long enough to walk more than about 10 feet. So now, I was both poor and disabled and Guthrie wanted to marry me, and all Alison could talk about was the importance of not rushing in to having children – something I had already explicitly stated was off the table at the moment anyway for a number of reasons, one being that I had not menstruated in over 6 years and was considered infertile due to ovarian failure, the second being that before I considered any fertility options I wanted to know what the prognosis for my disabilities was going to be, including genetic testing as the investigation into why I was not getting better after my accident had revealed several other chronic conditions, including connective tissue disorders, elevated autoimmune markers which still have yet to be properly investigated and diagnosed, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome. I thought this was weird, but I knew from experience that the brains of the very young and the very aged can fixate on strange things....unfortunately, I would eventually find out the full story regarding Alison’s obsession with my womb.

Alison died by Medical Assistance in Dying on June 25th, 2021 in Victoria, British Columbia. The irony in the chosen date does not escape me – only days before, I had called her to let her know that I knew that her son, James Douglas (Doug) Prentice the 4th, had molested multiple children, including his own two sons. I knew these things because I was present when Doug confessed to the crime, my husband and I were clearing out the basement of the house we’d rented from Alison after moving into our condo when it happened. I heard explicit detail not only regarding the assault on the then 8 and 6 year old boys, who had been sleeping in their beds in an apartment in Toronto, but also regarding the assault of a younger victim. I told Alison that I knew that she knew, and if she was as wise as I had heard she was, she would go to the police station with me and offer to testify. Given her age, this would guarantee she’d escape jail time. The next day, we found out she had been admitted to the hospital, and I knew I would never receive a response to that voicemail. Something didn’t seem right about this situation. A few days later, we received a call that Alison had passed. My husband and I were excluded from the memorial service, likely because between the death and the memorial I overheard Doug confessing to even more molestation. I suspect to this day that Doug thought we were going to publicly reveal him.

Guthrie and I made a report to the police and we were contacted fairly promptly. The detective was as helpful as she could be, but the crown prosecutor determined that victim testimony and the existence of several witnesses who heard confessions was not enough evidence to even ask Doug to come in for an interview. They could not even begin to investigate. They declined to contact any other the other victims. The charges would never stick, said the prosecutor. Our file was closed.

Guthrie’s mental health began to spiral. He blamed himself. There were several emergencies related to this that resulted in hospitalizations. Eventually, Guthrie finally took my advice and went no contact with Doug, and began getting therapy at a local centre that specializes in this kind of situation. Things started to look better. We decided we wanted children of our own, and we were working very hard with the help of an amazing medical team to make it happen. Thanks to the miracle of ovarian stimulation medication, I finally had a positive pregnancy test just when I was about to give up. Almost immediately, Guthrie began to spiral again. My pregnancy was a whirlwind of stress and trauma. Guthrie was constantly in the hospital, and I had severe perinatal depression and anxiety of my own. I had a high-risk pregnancy to begin with, and this was making it all so much more stressful. Guthrie stopped going to school, stopped attending therapy groups, and began missing medical and psychiatric appointments. I found out that he wasn’t taking his medication. Every time I asked what was going on, “Dad said...” “Granny said...” Alison had been dead for over 2 years by this point and Doug had been out of our lives for nearly as long. Eventually, Guthrie told me he had nightmares of Doug breaking into our condo, raping both of us, and kidnapping the baby. Nothing could convince him that this was impossible. I tried to get the trustee Alison had left in charge of Guthrie’s inheritance to allow us to sell the condo (as the trust owns a large portion of it due to some legal tomfoolery I don’t pretend to understand) but I was essentially told to mind my own business and stop trying to run Guthrie’s life for him. I encouraged Guthrie to advocate for himself, but he was functionally a child again by this point, literally referring to the trustees and lawyers as “the grownups.”

The day I gave birth should have been the happiest day of my life. But due to Guthrie’s failing mental health, it was the most traumatic. I won’t go into every detail, but suffice it to say that the first night with my baby was the night I realized I was going to be a single mother, and I knew what the excuse was going to be. “I just can’t let go of Doug and Granny.”

Time went on. My home life was chaotic. Every argument Guthrie and I ever had always came back to “because Doug and Granny said so.” Guthrie has been so infantalized and groomed that even at 40, the ghosts of the dead and the damned are still telling him what to do. And what of Guthrie’s mental health team? Well, they seem to think that throwing things, jumping out of cars, screaming at your wife, and threatening to drop your child off at the fire station are all normal behaviours...or at least Guthrie’s Nurse Case Manager and Psychiatrist have said so. They also believe that I was faking my professionally diagnosed perinatal/postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. “Everybody gets the baby blues” said the psychiatrist. “Postpartum depression isn’t real, and postpartum psychosis is an excuse that women use to manipulate their husbands” said the NCM. Guthrie’s therapist? He seems pretty much tired of telling Guthrie that the psychiatrist and NCM are wrong and need to be reported, and of telling Guthrie that nobody can take responsibility for his actions but himself.

And where is Doug now? Well, we approached one of the other victims and she contacted the RCMP. Another victim, also a woman, had already successfully brought charges, we found out, and the two women’s cases have resulted in a guilty plea and hopefully jail time (although Doug is currently attempting to get out of punishment with a mental health argument and at the time of writing is pending a court-ordered psychological assessment.) The constable in charge of the case contacted us, however it was determined that Guthrie would have to go to the Toronto Police to report Doug and attempt to have charges brought. We have attempted to do so multiple times...and we get shifted around to multiple people before eventually being put on hold. Our longest call time was approximately 4 hours if I recall correctly. Normally we got hung up on after an hour on hold. Clearly, this isn’t a big deal. The fact that this man is walking the streets, living within blocks of two schools, a daycare, an athletic field, and a community centre, does not matter to anyone who can do anything about it. Yes, he is in fact free while awaiting sentencing. Have I mentioned how many victims I know of and their ages?

There are four known female victims. Their ages at the time of the crimes were 2 years, 2 years, 4 years, and “very young.” There are two known male victims, age 6 (with severe developmental delays) and age 8 at the time of the crime. I have reason to believe there is at least one other female victim, who I can confirm Doug had occasional access to from the ages of a few months old to 4 years, and may still have access to, and there may be many others. Doug revealed in the course of the confessions to possessing at least 11 terabytes, possibly up to 14 terabytes, of explicit pornographic material involving children from infancy to pre-puberty (this information was provided to the police, but no warrant to search his technology was ever granted) When I said Doug is a serial child molester, I did not use the term lightly. He is a repeat offender, and he is actively dangerous to the welfare of children around him.

I am aware that if this article ever reaches Doug, he will know he has a grandchild. I have taken great steps to hide this from him so far, but at this point the story needs to be told publicly and my child is an integral part of it. While Guthrie chose to handle his mental health poorly (or rather, not at all) and this has lead to the dissolution of our marriage, this never would have been an issue in the first place if Alison had been half the virtuous beacon of feminism she claimed to be. She knew about every molestation. She could have prevented further victims by allowing the family to go to the police when the first “very young” girl was assaulted (Doug was caught in the act, as the story goes). She could have prevented further victims by alerting the authorities when she found out her own grandsons were victimized. She could have stopped it when the four year old girl was assaulted. She could have stepped in and done the right thing at any time. Instead, she let appearances and “what about the neighbours” dictate her actions, and she paid off the victims’ families to buy their silence. And when money couldn’t stop someone who had never had enough of it to be swayed by such frivolity, she chose to die instead of lie in the bed that she made. When it comes down to it, Doug is the reason Guthrie has trauma, and Alison is the reason that Guthrie genuinely believes that the indifference of the authorities is because he “deserved it for being born male.”

What’s the point of this piece? Not much, realistically I know it won’t change a thing. But in an ideal world, this would get people’s attention enough to make some change. Make investigation, proper investigation, of all childhood sexual assault allegations mandatory within a reasonable amount of time. No more of this “well we can’t interview him because it’s hearsay.” Interview the named witnesses, including every mandated reporter that knew about this while it was going on who turned a blind eye. Go to the people who were adults when the crime happened. Don’t ask the accused to come do an interview, TELL them to come do an interview. This is a serious allegation, they can come state their case or it can be considered an indication of guilt and warrants should be issued immediately. Conviction should come with a minimum sentence. No less than 5 years incarceration per victim, plus forfeiture of all assets including those held in trust to the victims or next of kin if the victim is deceased. In an ideal world, Alison’s honours and titles would be posthumously stripped due to her actively and intentionally harbouring a sexual predator. In an ideal world, all victims would be believed and supported, not just the ones who have the right “plumbing.”

We’ll never have an ideal world, but it would be nice if we as a collective human species could spend some effort trying to make it a decent one. We can start by locking up the pedophiles and all their accomplices. We can also stop celebrating people who knowingly harboured predators while claiming to be on the side of justice and truth.

Doug Prentice should be in jail. Alison Prentice should have her honours posthumously rescinded. Predators deserve no place of honour in our history books.