Former Residential School Supervisor Found Guilty of 10 Sexual Offences

StarPhoenix
November 5, 2013

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/Former+residential+school+supervisor+found+guilty+sexual+offences/9128499/story.html

Paul Leroux (in this 1970 photograph) faces 14 charges of indecent assault and three charges of committing gross indecency between 1959 and 1967 at the Beauval Indian Residential School.

A former supervisor at a residential school has been found guilty of eight counts of indecent assault and two counts of gross indecency against eight students in the 1960s.

Paul Leroux, who is 72, represented himself at his trial, pleading not guilty to assaulting 14 former students at the Beauval Indian Residential School in the 1960s.

Justice Murray Acton read the verdict, along with a lengthy explanation, in the Battlefords Court of Queen’s Bench Tuesday. Leroux was found not guilty on seven other charges.

After a brief deliberation, Acton decided Leroux will be held in custody until his sentencing, prompting applause from the crowded gallery in the courtroom.

The accused denied all the charges against him in his final arguments, made last Tuesday.

He said one incident of sexual abuse couldn't possibly have happened because the room one complainant alleges he was molested in didn't exist at the time.

Leroux said another alleged incident at a Saskatoon hotel couldn't have happened because he never travelled to Saskatoon with the school's choir or stayed in a hotel with them.

Crown prosecutor Mitch Piche said the discrepancies Leroux pointed out were nit-picking and he thought witness testimony was very detailed, given how long ago it happened.

Leroux was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1998 for abusing 14 boys and young men at Grollier Hall, a residential school in Inuvik run by the Roman Catholic Church.

Those convictions were for gross indecency, indecent assault and attempted buggery between 1967 and 1979.

Leroux worked as an activities supervisor and guidance counsellor at Grollier.