Former Victoria student awarded $2.3M in sex abuse case
CTV
A former Victoria public school student has been awarded more than $2.3 million from the estate of a school tutor who sexually abused him as a child. His lawyers say the decision amounts to the 'highest compensatory damages award for sexual abuse in Canada,' but the plaintiff says survivors like him still have a long way to go before justice is achieved.
Warning: This story is about the sexual abuse of a child and may be disturbing to readers.
A former Victoria public school student has been awarded more than $2.3 million from the estate of a school tutor who sexually abused him as a child. His lawyers say the decision amounts to the "highest compensatory damages award for sexual abuse in Canada," but the plaintiff says survivors like him still have a long way to go before justice is achieved.
The plaintiff, now 35 years old and identified only as "H.N." in the court documents, brought the civil lawsuit against the estate of Gary John Redgate, who volunteered at the plaintiff's elementary school in 1999 and 2000.
The former student also sought damages from the Greater Victoria School District for "vicarious liability" related to the abuse, however B.C. Supreme Court Justice Simon Coval dismissed the claim against the school board, saying the abuse was "insufficiently connected to any risk created by the school or its representatives."
"This is because Mr. Redgate’s abuse occurred, not during the tutorials organized by the school, but at Mr. Redgate's home, in visits arranged between Mr. Redgate and H.N. and his family," the judge wrote in his decision Monday.
Redgate died in 2023, before the trial began. Lawyers for his estate did not challenge the estate's liability for his actions, but they did contest the value of the award sought for pain and suffering, loss of earning capacity, cost of future care and punitive damages.
"I am deeply disappointed that the court declined to hold the school board – the very institution that was responsible for introducing me to Redgate and the very institution that created the environment in which Redgate was enabled to abuse me – liable for Redgate’s actions," the plaintiff wrote in a statement through his lawyers following the decision.