Handling of sex crime allegations at N.S. youth detention centre under scrutiny
Global News
All of the complainants are now adults. Twenty-nine of them are men and one is a woman.
The Nova Scotia government is denying allegations that staff at a youth detention centre were repeatedly told a swim instructor was sexually abusing incarcerated residents before he left his job of 29 years in 2017.
The assertion is part of a notice of defence submitted in July 2020 by the province in response to a class action filed a few months earlier on behalf of three former residents who allege they were sexually abused by the instructor.
The two court documents shed light on a seven-year RCMP investigation that led to the arrest last month of 75-year-old Donald Douglas Williams. He is facing 66 charges stemming from the alleged abuse of 30 young people between 1989 and 2015.
In the notice of defence, the government claims each of the plaintiffs were told how to report sexual abuse, but “no plaintiff did so regarding the former employee.”
“None of the plaintiffs … initiated, sought or requested an investigation of the former employee while they were incarcerated” at the Nova Scotia Youth Centre in Waterville, N.S., the notice says.
The defence challenges the class action’s statement of claim, which says the plaintiffs reported alleged sexual abuse and misconduct multiple times but “no effective action was taken to remedy the situation.”
“Instances of sexual abuse committed by the swim instructor were reported to persons in authority at Waterville at various times,” the statement says. “Regardless, nothing was done by way of investigation or rectification.”
The complainants were between the ages of 12 and 18 when they were being held at the centre, an RCMP spokesman told a news conference on Sept. 17.
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