Ex-Nunavut teacher found not guilty on latest sex charges

Former Nunavut schoolteacher and convicted sex offender Edward Horne was found not guilty Thursday of 10 sex-related charges based on allegations from former students he had taught several decades ago.

In a written decision released Thursday, Nunavut court Justice Robert Kilpatrick stated that there was no corroborating evidence to prove the four former students' allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.

Horne, now 64, maintained his innocence on the 10 charges and pleaded not guilty during his judge-only trial in Iqaluit, which took place in October and January.

The charges which included buggery and gross indecent assault were based on allegations by four men, now in their 30s and 40s, who had been taught by Horne between 1971 and 1982.

The complainants cannot be identified under a court-ordered publication ban. The men were between six and 11 years old when the alleged abuses took place, according to the decision.

Kilpatrick noted that the allegations go back decades, pointing out that it took the complainants many years after the alleged abuse before they came forward.

"The evidence on this trial is not entirely satisfactory. It falls short of adequately explaining why the delay in reporting continued for so long into adulthood," Kilpatrick wrote in his decision.

"The evidence does not really explain what triggered the change in these four complainants' attitudes to allow them to overcome any psychological or emotional barriers that had influenced them as adolescents."

Because of the complainants' delays in coming forward, the Crown no longer had the ability to prosecute such dated allegations to the required criminal standard, he stated.

"The passage of time will often result in there being no independent evidence of a crime," Kilpatrick wrote.

"Yet the effectiveness of the fact-finding process may often depend upon there being just such evidence."

The judge also ruled that there was not the "corroborating evidence necessary to move the complainants' allegations beyond suspicion, to proof beyond a reasonable doubt," so the law therefore requires Horne to be found not guilty on all counts.

Horne's lawyer, Tom Boyd, suggested during the trial that the four complainants had only come forward after learning about $21 million in compensation that was awarded to 82 of Horne's victims in 2002.

Horne pleaded guilty in 1987 and 2000 to 28 charges involving boys he had taught in various eastern Arctic communities during the 1970s and 1980s.