How a driving instructor allegedly got away with decades of harassment and abuse

Jordan They live in every community, and word gets passed around. Usually, of course, among young women.

Women Whispering Hey, be careful around that person…

Don’t be alone with them…

Make sure you cover up in that class…

Don’t go on a date with him. Just don’t…

Jordan These are whisper networks that pass along warnings about predatory men, and it shouldn’t be the best way women have of keeping themselves safe. But sometimes it is. There is usually a critical mass, though. Once it’s happened to enough people or over enough time, it becomes common knowledge, at least in the community and hopefully to the authorities who investigate and eventually arrest the creep. So to learn last month that in Victoria, BC, and the small town of Quesnel before it, there was no critical mass for decades, was disturbing.

News Anchor It was just over a week ago when Aiko Oye had a driving lesson with Steve Wallace. But just minutes into the lesson, Aiko says she felt something was off.

Aiko Testimonial He looked into my eyes and was like, wow, you have movie star eyes. And I was like, that’s strange. He said, I love you about 15 times to me.

News Anchor Aiko later told her sister and friends and realized she wasn’t alone…

Jordan Steve Wallace claims to have taught more than 25,000 people how to drive, and the flood of stories that began with the initial complaint last month has not stopped. This week, he was arrested and charged. Finally. But the bigger question is how how did this happen to decades, literally decades of young women without anyone coming forward publicly? Just how large a persona was Wallace in public life, and how loud were the whispers about him? What will happen in court? And what does the story of Steve Wallace’s alleged victims reveal about how our approach to sexual harassment has and hasn’t changed over the years?

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, this is The Big Story. Brishti Basu is a reporter at the Capital Daily where this story broke, hey Brishti.

Brishti Hi. Nice to meet you.

Jordan Nice to meet you, too. Why don’t you start for people who haven’t lived in Victoria at any point over the last number of years I guess, start by telling me who is Steve Wallace?

Brishti Steve Wallace is the owner of Wallace Driving School, which is a very prominent business in Victoria. He moved his business here from Quesnel, which is a small city in Interior, BC in 2008.

Jordan Give me a sense of what kind of personality he is or maybe was in the community.

Brishti So Wallace is pretty deeply embedded into the community. He had a weekly column at the Times Columnist , which is a local newspaper of record in Victoria, and he would also appear frequently on prominent radio shows to share his opinions about all things driving.

Jordan How did the story begin? When did the community begin to realize that something wasn’t right here?

Brishti Well, from our perspective, the story started when my colleague Emily Fagan heard about an Instagram account from her teenage cousin who goes to high school here. The account is called Wallace Driving School Victims, and it was basically created by a teenager after she had a driving lesson with Steve Wallace, where she says she was sexually harassed. She shared that story with her sister, who told her that some of her friends had privately shared similar stories about Wallace. So then we started talking to them.

Jordan Can you give me some examples of what the alleged harassment was like and the stories that you heard?

Brishti Pretty much all of them said that he would repeatedly compliment their appearances. Tell them, ‘I love you’, touch their leg, their thigh, their hand during driving lessons. It did go beyond just the driving lessons, though.

Jordan Explain that.

Brishti So some women say that he pinched or rubbed their butt. One says he leaned across and buckled her seatbelt during a driving lesson, running his hand across her chest in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. In another incident, a woman who was a teenager at the time alleges that he instructed her to drive to his friend’s apartment and made her go inside. She said that he and his friend spent about half an hour complimenting her appearance, asking her to guess the cost of the objects in the room and just laughed at her to comfort.

Jordan How long has this been going on for at least according to the stories that you’ve been told?

Brishti In total, we’ve interviewed 20 women. There were more who reached out to us with stories, but we kind of had to cap it. The first known allegation was in 1978. So some of these stories date back 30 to 40 years.

Jordan What happened next? Do we know how the police became involved?

Brishti Basically, what we know is from sources because Victoria Police has not been responding to our emails or calls or anything. So the women who were involved, they told us that they have reported their incidents to police and that police were investigating. And as of last week, we found out that Victoria PD had actually arrested Wallace. He was released on his own recognizance, and then he’s asked to appear in court on November 25.

Jordan Did the police say anything about what led to his arrest, why they arrested him now? The investigations conclusions at all?

Brishti No. Again, we haven’t been able to speak to police. They haven’t said anything on this investigation at all. The information that we have is from an undertaking document that was sent to us, and it shows that Victoria PD are recommending three charges of sexual assault against Steve Wallace, and the undertaking document also lists some conditions that he has to abide by including the fact that he’s prohibited from contacting the women who are named in the allegations against him.

Jordan Maybe you can describe for me a little bit what happens in a community when allegations like this surface about someone like Wallace, who is a known commodity.

Brishti I mean, the consequences were kind of immediate. As soon as our first article came out, the Times columnist said that his weekly column was suspended. And then our investigation actually led to the start of an ICBC (Insurance board of British Columbia) investigation. ICBC actually sent us a statement on Monday that said that his driving instructor license has been permanently revoked, and the story was, of course, picked up by pretty much every local outlet here right away.

Jordan What did Wallace say, if anything, when confronted with these allegations?

Brishti Well, when we first reached out to Wallace, he said that he would be coming out with a statement that would mostly be a Mea culpa, an apology. But when we reached him again a couple of days later to confirm some more things, he said the allegations are not true. He said that sometimes you have to touch students hand to steer them or touch their leg to help them break. That’s pretty much all we’ve heard from Wallace.

Jordan What about in the broader community? I’m not necessarily speaking here about the consequences for him immediately, but this is a man and a driving school that has taught hundreds, if not thousands, of people in that community, right?

Brishti Yeah. Wallace himself says he has taught 25,000 students over the course of his career. When the stories first came out, we immediately started getting emails from women in Quesnel, I guess, who had found the stories and they were reaching out to us with their own allegations against him. They said that they had never spoken out, even though the incidents happen 30 to 40 years ago.

Jordan Tell me a little bit more about that and what they said, because this is the thing, I mean, I guess it shouldn’t surprise anybody now that we’ve learned so much about how these things go on, but the fact that he was allegedly able to do this in 1978 and nothing came out about it until 2021 is still kind of astounding.

Brishti It is. Yeah. The women who read that story, it was astounding. A lot of them said they were so shocked to hear the testimonies of the teenage girls in Victoria because so many of them had heard the exact same stories or encountered Wallace himself doing these exact same things to them in the Seventies and Eighties. The general sense we got was that it was more acceptable behavior back in the Eighties and that it would be more uncommon for someone to speak out about something like this then because they would be less likely to be believed or taken seriously.

Jordan Often, when stuff like this happens, you end up hearing that, you know, this was something that was known and passed around amongst women who were around this guy. Did that happen in this case? What I’m trying to get a sense from you is, I guess, the kind of underground whisper network versus the fact that this guy was so prominent in the community.

Brishti Yeah. Every single woman that we’ve talked to from Quesnel, said that even before they encountered Wallace, they knew about his behavior through, as you say, a whisper network, through rumors through just girls warning each other to be aware of him. We have this one story of a girl who was taking her driver’s Ed class at school in Quesnel, and she was called to the front of the class by Wallace, who dropped a pen and then asked her to pick it up. And as she goes to pick it up, she was wearing a scoop neck top, and she notices that his eyes were following her chest. She quickly tried to cover it up and went back to her desk, and the girl next to her said something along the lines of never wear a scoop neck T shirt in this class. He will always do that to you. So it was very clear that, you know, Wallace’s behavior was commonly known in Quesnel, but nobody really said anything. There were no official complaints that we know of.

Jordan I’m sure you’re used to covering stories of sex harassment and sexual assault in today’s climate. What’s it like investigating something that happened in a totally different climate?

Brishti It’s difficult because it happened so long ago. Trauma affects people’s memories in such a way that you don’t always remember everything. That, combined with the fact that it was 30 to 40 years ago, made it really difficult for people to remember specific details. And it made it hard for us to confirm some of those things. We were able to do that by looking at newspaper archives from the time, and that’s how we were able to confirm some of the things that were said to us about certain events that he was at where some incidents happened. So as traumatic as it is for the women to relive their experiences, we’re so grateful that they were able to reach out and that they were brave enough to put their names to it, and come out and speak in such a bold way.

Jordan You mentioned events. Tell me about some of the ones that you were able to corroborate then, and just how public was this kind of thing? I gather he appeared at tons of local events.

Brishti One of the events that we focused specifically on in our investigation was led by the Quesnel Pageant Society. Two different women said that Wallace made inappropriate comments at that event in front of the former Premier Ujjal Dosanjh. Now Premier Dosanjh says he doesn’t remember any of these incidents, he says because of his memory. It was years ago. But two teenage girls told us that Wallace said something along the lines of Why don’t you pick up the lingerie that you left in my house the other night? And then he kind of laughed it off as a joke. But the two girls, they said that they were pretty upset. They were uncomfortable. One of them reported it to the pageant leader. The pageant lead, who was also quoted in the story, she told us that she spoke to Wallace about this allegation, and Wallace tried to blame it on the girls. He said that the girl said something first.

Jordan So what about the women, both in Victoria and in Quesnel, who he allegedly harassed long ago? Have you heard anything from them? Is this closure for them? Are they still skeptical? As you mentioned, no charges have officially been laid yet. We all know the long history of sexual assault allegations never ending up in court. What do they think is happening?

Brishti We haven’t fully had a real conversation with the woman in Quesnel yet. I think the next time we’re going to hear from them is is going to be in November when Wallace actually appears in court and we find out whether he’s actually going to be charged. But for now, everyone is feeling pretty optimistic and pretty happy that at least he has been arrested. Even we weren’t expecting to hear the news that Wallace is going to be arrested for this. So right now the mood is feeling pretty optimistic.

Jordan It was an Instagram account that got the ball rolling on this. Has there been any response on that social media account to the arrest?

Brishti I mean, basically, the person who runs the account is the person who has been in touch with us, and she has been regularly updating that account, letting people know that he’s been arrested, that his license has been canceled. This is seen as a victory for now. But we do need to remember that BC Prosecution service has not formally charged Steve Wallace with anything. None of the allegations have yet been proven in court.

Jordan What’s happening with the driving school now? I understand he’s not teaching, but does he own it? Is he running it?

Brishti He and his wife own and run the driving school. He is currently not teaching. But we’ve seen the driving school operate as business as usual. The school itself is still operating.

Jordan Has his wife said anything about the allegations?

Brishti She has not, no.

Jordan When you speak to those victims and you know, I include all the victims here, but specifically the ones from so long ago. Is this reporting helping them? Is it bringing closure? Is it dredging backup trauma, which I guess is always a worry in a situation like this. Like how do they feel about it?

Brishti Of course, something like this is a very deeply personal story. It’s different for different people. Some people said that they’re not currently traumatized or retraumatized by talking about it, but others, we’ve had people crying on the phone while talking to us. The general overwhelming feeling, though, is that they want to come out and speak about this because they want to assure the young girls who are going through it right now. They want them to know that they’re not crazy, that Wallace has a history of this kind of behavior and that they support the young women who are coming out now who are speaking out now. So really, it’s more about creating a supportive environment for some action to be taken.

Jordan There’s a lot of allegations of a very serious inappropriate touching and inappropriate remarks, that kind of stuff. But there’s also stuff that strikes me as particularly given the dynamic between a much older man in a position of power and a really young girl that seems almost designed to try to not cross a line while also crossing it at the same time. Do you know what I’m saying? Like it seems like to just toe up to the like making someone feel uncomfortable.

Brishti Yeah. I mean, I’m not sure that, you know, again, these are allegations they’re not confirmed. But if they are true, I’m not sure that Wallace was really even considering, you know, what is appropriate and what is not. I think that he was very blatant in a lot of his behavior. That’s another thing that comes up a lot of the times in these interviews, which kind of indicates that he didn’t really expect any backlash or any repercussions. He was just doing what he thought was normal and acceptable. It wasn’t like he was trying to hide anything.

Jordan What happened when you talked to the parents of some of these young girls? How do they feel?

Brishti Proud honestly, for the most part. We talked to I think a couple of sets of parents who just told us that they’re very proud of their children for coming forward.

Jordan And so what happens now? I guess we wait until November and see if the charges are laid and if they go to court?

Brishti Yeah, I’m not exactly sure when the charges are going to be approved, if they will be approved. Not sure when we’re going to find that news, but for sure the next update to this whole incident is going to come once he appears in court on November 25th.

Jordan In the meantime, how has the community changed if it has? I mean, as you said, 25,000 people at least allegedly went through this school, and that’s an awful lot of potential victims. And I wonder if it changes the tone or the mood of safety in the community to find out that someone like this is allegedly operating in plain sight.

Brishti Yeah. While I don’t think that we’ve seen a broad shift, so to speak, in Victoria, there’s a lot of other things happening at the same time as this investigation came out. But there has been some response from the just driving school industry in the city. Another company DriveWise, they decided to install cameras in their vehicles that students can use if they choose to, to ensure everyone’s safety and to make sure that something like this never happens there. So that’s one step in the right direction. We haven’t heard from Wallace driving school about whether or not they plan to implement the same kind of things. But that is what’s happening here.

Jordan Brishti, thank you so much for telling us about this. And thanks for all your work investigating the story. I know some of those conversations cannot have been easy.

Brishti Thanks for having me Jordan.

Jordan Brishti Basu of Capital Daily .

That was the Big Story. For more, you know where to go, thebigstorypodcast.ca on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN via email thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com Email [click here!]. You also know which podcast player you like best and you can listen to us there, and you should do all the nice things it lets you do with a show that you love.

Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow. Back to top of page