‘He should never have been charged'

Winnipeg Free Press

3 days ago

A Manitoba judge says a group home worker never would have been charged with sexually abusing a teenage girl had Winnipeg police and a provincial investigator conducted a proper probe into the allegations.
'In fact, it appears overwhelmingly clear that he could not have abused the child as suggested, and that he should never have been subjected to these proceedings,' wrote Court of King's Bench family division Judge Kaye Dunlop in a June 25 ruling.
The man, who's in his late 50s, had worked in group homes and provincial corrections for decades, but lost his job, reputation and health, as well as his relationship with his only child for a 'significant period of time' over the false allegations.
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'Incomplete, single-minded and careless investigations that lead to such catastrophic consequences simply cannot happen,' said Dunlop.
'All institutions involved… must do more than the bare minimum to properly investigate and scrutinize the evidence before proceeding with allegations of child abuse.'
Dunlop made the comments in her decision on an August 2021 attempt by the Child and Family All Nations Coordinated Response Network to have the worker's name placed on the provincial child abuse registry.
The worker opposed the move, which led to court proceedings last year.
Dunlop found he had not abused the girl as defined under the Child and Family Services Act and should not be placed on the registry.
Crown prosecutors had stayed criminal charges of sexual assault and interference related to the girl's allegations during the worker's trial in February 2020. There were significant inconsistencies in her testimony compared with what she had told investigators.
After the charges were stayed, the child welfare agency moved to have the worker added to the abuse registry.
The worker is referred to by the initial 'M.' in Dunlop's decision.
'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 M. well before he was charged with criminality of a sexual nature,' wrote Dunlop, adding the vulnerable girl was owed 'a much greater duty of care than she received.'
Dunlop said the girl likely faces long-term damage because of the stress of court proceedings and of not having been believed. The judge said she believes the girl may have been sexually assaulted at some point and that she doesn't think the girl, who is now an adult, intentionally fabricated her claim about M.
The investigation was sparked in 2017, when the 15-year-old girl told her favourite worker at the Marymound group home that she had been sexually abused two years earlier while she stayed at another group home. That worker reported it to the girl's social worker, who reported it to the Child and Family All Nations Coordinated Response Network.
The agency called in the provincial investigations unit, which is responsible for probing child abuse allegations related to child welfare system workers.
A child abuse investigator interviewed the girl in February 2017, while she was pregnant and staying at a Winnipeg home for teenage single mothers.
She told the investigator she had been sexually touched in the group home office in August 2015 by a white bald man who rode a bike to work. She referred to the worker by a short version of M.'s first name.
The girl, who's from northern Manitoba, was taken to a city hospital and then the group home after she tried to harm herself in her home community in July 2015.
The provincial investigator had a forensic investigator at Toba Centre conduct another interview with the girl days later, which was observed by a city police officer, who showed her an improper photo lineup. The police officer identified M. as the staffer, despite the child appearing unsure.
The first police officer to handle the case didn't complete the investigation. The second officer to be given the case assumed it had been completed, Dunlop said.
The second officer interviewed M. and later followed up for Crown prosecutors, but did not fully examine evidence or conduct thorough interviews with potential witnesses.
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M. 'quite literally begged' police and the provincial investigator to probe for information that would exonerate him, like looking at group home records, conducting interviews with a number of potential witnesses, including group home staff, and examining the layout of the facility, which would have made it impossible for him to abuse the girl in the manner she alleged, the judge wrote.
The worker was eventually arrested and criminally charged in October 2017.
After the criminal proceedings fell apart in early 2020, the same provincial abuse investigator interviewed M. in July of that year.
Dunlop concluded the provincial investigator failed to review rafts of information — including information from the criminal proceedings in which the charges were stayed — before informing the child welfare agency the abuse claim had been substantiated. That played a pivotal role in the agency's move to have M.'s name placed on the abuse registry.
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Erik PinderaReporter
Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Erik.
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