Ex-group home worker sues over sex abuse allegations

A former group home worker is suing the city, several police officers and two child-welfare agencies over allegations he sexually abused a teenager in care.

The man is seeking $850,000 in damages for the accusations which the lawsuit states “effectually destroyed his life.”

The statement of claim, filed Dec. 23 in Court of King’s Bench, names the City of Winnipeg, two Winnipeg Police Service officers, the Child and Family All Nations Coordinated Response Network, a provincial abuse investigator and the director of the child protection branch of the Child and Family Services.

In 2017, a teenage victim accused the man of taking them into an office in the group home he worked at, groping them and trying to undress them before they got away.

The charges against the man were stayed in February 2020, in part, due to “major evidentiary” concerns with the child’s testimony, the lawsuit states.

The man had worked in group homes and provincial corrections, but lost his ability to find work due to the allegations, the court filing states.

Had police and CFS carried out proper investigations, he would have been promptly exonerated, it says.

“The rampant incompetence prevalent throughout the WPS investigation ultimately led to unnecessary criminal proceedings,” the lawsuit says.

The court filing alleges police investigators did not follow best practices during the probe and didn’t get any information from the group home where the alleged abuse took place.

The lawsuit claims that at some point, one investigator was promoted and left the case incomplete. Another officer became involved in the investigation, but there were no formal instructions to close the investigation or notes on outstanding matters.

The CFS investigation, too, was problematic because investigators failed to ask the group home the victim was staying at for various documents to determine who was working the day of the alleged abuse, the lawsuit says.

Despite a lack of evidence, the child welfare agency applied to have the man placed on the child abuse registry in 2021.

In a July 2025 decision denying the application, Court of King’s Bench family division Justice Kaye Dunlop said the agencies involved must do more than the “bare minimum” to properly investigate and scrutinize the evidence before proceeding with allegations of child abuse.

“If any of the investigators tasked with investigating the child’s allegations had actually done what they were supposed to do, they would have determined that there was sufficient objective evidence to be found that would have exonerated (the accused) well before he was charged with criminality of a sexual nature,” Dunlop wrote in her decision.

Dunlop said the alleged victim was owed a greater duty of care than they received.

The lawsuit claims the damage “caused by the investigative failures and the continued attempts to obtain some sort of result in a legal proceeding” is “wholly and absolutely” irreparable.

The court filing also claims when the man was looking for work he was advised by a representative of the All Nations agency that when it was contacted by potential employers they were told not to hire him, given the past court proceedings.

The defendants have yet to respond in court.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca