“Sask. appeal court drops sex conviction; adds jail time” & related articles

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The Canadian Press

Published Tuesday, May 5, 2015 4:28PM CST

Court of Queen's Bench

(File photo)

 

A notorious residential school sex abuser has successfully had one of his convictions quashed, but Paul Leroux will nevertheless serve more jail time after an appeal court ruling Tuesday.

Leroux, convicted in 2013 of 10 counts of abusing boys at Beauval Indian Residential School in northern Saskatchewan, had his sentence increased from three years to eight.

The increase came even though the court threw out one of his original convictions, saying the trial judge misconstrued it while arriving at a verdict.

“I find the palpable mischaracterization of this evidence is overriding in its effect with respect to this conviction,” wrote Justice Neal Caldwell of the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan.

The appellate judges, however, found the original sentence far insufficient for the crimes committed. Caldwell wrote it failed to consider the repeated nature of Leroux’s crimes and the vulnerability of his young victims.

“The general context in which Mr. Leroux committed his offences lends significant gravity to them,” he wrote.

“The physical and sexual abuse that occurred at Indian residential schools is grimmer by reason of the exceptionally vulnerable nature of its victims and the utter imbalance of power as between the aboriginal victims of that abuse and their families, on the one hand, and the church, the state, and their respective agents — the latter of which usually includes the abuser — on the other.”

Leroux’s victims complained at the original sentencing that he hadn’t been given enough jail time. At the time of that sentencing, Leroux was 73.

It wasn’t his first set of convictions for sexual abuse at a residential school.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1998 for abusing 14 boys and young men at Grollier Hall, a residential school in Inuvik, Northwest Territories.

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Paul Leroux to serve more time for residential school sex abuse

Sentence increased from 3 years to 8

CBC News Posted: May 05, 2015 4:20 PM CT

Last Updated: May 05, 2015 4:20 PM CT

Paul Leroux following a court appearance relating to abuse of boys at a Saskatchewan Indian Residential School in the 1960s.

Paul Leroux following a court appearance relating to abuse of boys at a Saskatchewan Indian Residential School in the 1960s.

Paul Leroux, a former dormitory supervisor at a northern Saskatchewan Indian Residential School, has been ordered to return to prison to serve a longer sentence for the sexual abuse of boys at the Beauval school in the 1960s.

The Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan made the order in a decision, released Tuesday, that reviewed the 2013 conviction and sentencing of Leroux.

Leroux’s sentence has been increased from three years to eight. He was given two days, from the May 4 decision date, to turn himself in. Leroux was granted parole after serving one year of the initial three-year sentence. That sentence was given after RCMP charged Leroux in 2011, following a lengthy investigation.

The appeal court noted that Leroux had regularly and repeatedly abused boys as young as nine years old. According to the decision, Leroux would give the youngsters mixed drinks, including martinis, before assaulting them. In some cases the assaults took place in his quarters at the school. Sometimes the boys were assaulted in their bunks.

Leroux had previously been convicted, and sentenced to 10 years in prison, for sexual assaults that took place at another residential school, Grollier Hall in Inuvik, from 1968 to 1979. That case went through the courts in the 1990s.

In the Saskatchewan case, the appeal court found that one of the ten convictions, relating to a total of eight victims, had to be quashed because the judge mistakenly mixed up the facts.

Leroux, now 74, represented himself on the appeal.

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Convicted child molester Leroux ordered back to prison

 The Saskatoon Star Phoenix

05 May 2015

Convicted child molester Leroux ordered back to prison

SASKATOON, SASK,: DECEMBER 5, 2013 – Paul Leroux exits Battleford’s Court of Queen’s Bench escorted by RCMP, December 5, 2013. (Gord Waldner/ The StarPhoenix)

Photograph by: Gord Waldner , The StarPhoenix

Four months after being released on full parole, a man found guilty of molesting seven boys at a Saskatchewan residential school in the 1960s has been ordered back to prison.

The three-year sentence originally imposed on Paul Mary Leroux, 74, was “wholly unfit in the circumstances,” according to a reserved decision by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal. Instead, according to the decision, an eight-year term “is a fit sentence in the circumstances of this matter.”

Leroux was ordered to turn himself in to police within two days of the appeal’s May 4 release.

Leroux, 74, was sentenced on Dec. 12, 2013, to three years in prison after being convicted in Battleford Court of Queen’s Bench of indecent assault and gross indecency for acts that would be classified today as major sexual assaults. He served 13 months before being granted full parole by the Parole Board of Canada in January.

Leroux was a dormitory supervisor at the Beauval Indian Residential School in the 1960s when he sexually assaulted the victims, who were young boys at the time. He was originally convicted of assaulting eight boys but was acquitted on appeal of the indecent assault of one boy.

After working at Beauval, Leroux moved to another residential school in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, where he abused 14 boys between 1967 and 1979.

He was convicted in 1998 of the Inuvik crimes and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Leroux has admitted his sexually inappropriate behaviour at the Inuvik residential school, according to the parole board, but he has continued to deny his guilt regarding the Beauval crimes.

In Monday’s reserved decision, the Court of Appeal acquitted Leroux of the one count of indecent assault, saying “the judge erred because the evidence does not support his conclusions as to the facts of the assault.”

In adding five years to the original sentence imposed on Leroux, however, the Court of Appeal said it was “proportionate to the gravity of the offences committed by Mr. Leroux and his moral culpability in committing them.”

The sentence also recognizes “the seriousness of the offences, the ages of the victims, the repeated nature of the offences, the multiplicity of victims, the residential school context in which the offences were committed, the effects of the offences on the victims, the abuse of a position of trust in relation to the victims, the absence of remorse, among other aggravating circumstances.”

The Court of Appeal said the eight-year sentence was “crafted to achieve the primary objectives of denouncing Mr. Leroux’s unlawful conduct and deterring Mr. Leroux and other persons from committing offences of this nature.”

2 Responses to “Sask. appeal court drops sex conviction; adds jail time” & related articles

  1. Sylvia says:

    Well hallelujah! Look at this. The Saskatchewan court of Appeal has ordered serial molester and former residential dorm supervisor Paul Leroux back to jail!

    Hats off to the Crown for successfully arguing the injustice of the original three year sentence. Eight years is much more fitting than three.

    Yes, the self-represented Leroux seems to have had a minor victory in his appeal, ie one of the convictions was overturned. I would like to see the decision before commenting. I will post it shortly, and will let you know when I do.

    My thoughts and prayers are with the many Leroux victims, particularly at this time with those who were abused by this molester at the Residential School in Beuaval. You were not forgotten.

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