Senior admits to sex crimes involving intellectually disabled teens

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This article was published 13/03/2024 (910 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg senior has admitted to sexually abusing a cognitively delayed Special Olympics athlete and a second intellectually vulnerable teen.

The 70-year-old man pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of sexual interference and one count of sexual assault after repeated assaults on the victims between September 2019 and May 2022.

Court heard the man befriended the first victim when she was 15 and involved in Special Olympics activities with his son.

The man cannot be named as it might identify his victims.

The accused, who got to know the first victim’s parents through Special Olympics activities, offered to take their daughter on outings with his son, Crown attorney Kellie Stashko told provincial court Judge Keith Eyrikson.

Over time, the weekly outings no longer included the accused’s son, and the man started buying the girl stuffed animals and other toys and giving her money.

Stashko said on repeated occasions the man groped the girl under her clothing while the two sat alone in his pickup truck, sometimes as she played video games on his cellphone.

Stashko said the man would sometimes move the girl to the backseat “with her sometimes telling him to stop and him not listening to her.”

By September 2021, the girl’s parents told the man to stop contacting their daughter “as he was not following the family rules and was buying her too many things,” Stashko said.

The assaults were reported to police in May 2022 after a school staff member noticed the victim had a smartphone.

“It came to light that (the accused) had provided the phone to her,” Stashko said. The victim told the school staffer the accused had given her the phone and that she was to use it “in secret.”

“The phone was used to facilitate meetings before or after school between the two,” Stashko said.

The accused turned himself in to police in June 2022 and provided a video statement admitting “it was possible some touching occurred,” Stashko said.

It was later revealed the man had also been similarly abusing one of the girl’s friends, a then-18-year-old cognitively delayed woman.

The man arranged secret meetings with the woman and sexually molested her in his truck. During one incident, the man pushed the woman on her back and simulated intercourse, “showing her what it would be like to have sex,” Stashko said.

The man’s guilty pleas came on what was to be the first day of his trial. He will be sentenced at a later date.

Court did not hear if the man was a Special Olympics volunteer. A request for comment from local Special Olympics officials went unanswered by deadline Tuesday.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca