CANADA
Ottawa Citizen
SHAAMINI YOGARETNAM, OTTAWA CITIZEN
A former Sunday school teacher and husband of a children’s pastor has been charged by Ottawa police with human trafficking.
Matthew Valentini, 34, is charged with trafficking of a person under the age of 18, drug possession and driving with a suspended license. He was arrested last Friday for “offences relating to the sexual exploitation of a 15-year-old female over a period of time between 2013 and 2014,” police said on Tuesday.
Valentini is a former computer consultant who lived in Fredericton, N.B. before returning to Ottawa in 2011, according to his wife Miranda Valentini’s staff profile on the Sunnyside Wesleyan Church website. Miranda Valentini is the children’s pastor at the Ottawa church. A fall teaching schedule from 2011 lists Matthew Valentini as a Grade 5 Sunday school teacher. The schedule for this year’s Sunday school session appeared to have been removed from the church website by Tuesday morning.
The police allegations against Matthew Valentini do not relate to his role as a Sunday school teacher at the church, located on Grosvenor Avenue. The mission of the church, according to its website, is “to be one church of missional congregations of faithful followers of Jesus Christ scattered around the neighbourhoods of the National Capital Region.”
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