School hired sex offender despite parole for murder

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This article was published 22/12/2019 (2283 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A convicted murderer and sex offender who was working as a private-school guidance counsellor while on parole has been denied extra credit for the time he spent in custody before he was sentenced for his most recent crime.

This week, the province’s highest court issued a written decision that made public the man’s employment and past criminal convictions. The Manitoba Court of Appeal ruled the man, who is not being named by the Free Press to protect the identity of his victim, is not entitled to credit for the pre-sentence custody he served while he was detained without a parole hearing.

While he was working as a guidance counsellor at a Winnipeg private school his 13-year-old niece attended, the man was accused of sexually touching her on the drive back from a school field trip in April 2017. Later the same day, the 13-year-old told her sister the 68-year-old man had touched her thigh and put his hand up her shirt, touching her right breast under her bra.

At a trial in November 2018, he admitted giving his niece a ride but denied the allegations, suggesting she lied to get back at him and his wife for refusing to let her move in with them. The trial judge didn’t believe his testimony, and found him guilty.

His employment as a guidance counsellor came after he was convicted of two homicides. He was sentenced to three years in prison for manslaughter in 1977 and received a life sentence for first-degree murder in 1982, followed by subsequent convictions for serious sexual offences in 1985.

He was eventually granted parole, and for more than a decade, he had no known criminal involvement, the Court of Appeal noted in its decision.

The man’s parole was suspended before he was charged with sexually touching his niece, and he was sent back to prison. He was granted bail a few months after the charges were laid, but he wasn’t released from custody because of his suspended parole. His parole was then revoked, but it was granted again around two months before the man’s trial, and he was released.

After he was found guilty of sexually touching his niece, he received a one-year sentence to be served at the same time as his previous life sentence, and returned to custody.

On appeal, part of the defence’s argument was that the man should have received pre-sentence custody credit for the 300 days he spent behind bars after he’d been granted bail but before he’d had a parole hearing. The appeal court disagreed and rejected the appeals of his sentence and his conviction.