A Pemberton man convicted of child sexual assault charges in November 2021 will get a new trial.
The man, 54, was originally found guilty on several charges related to the abuse of minors.
He was sentenced to five and a half years in jail in August 2022.
The man, anonymized in court of appeal documents as R.M., appealed the conviction, which was allowed on Dec. 11, 2023, and a new trial was ordered.
On Jan. 22, the Crown also sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. The timeline for a decision on that application is unknown.
The matter is next in court on March 13 for a pretrial conference, scheduled to be heard by video in Prince George Law Courts. The new trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 15 in Pemberton Provincial Court.
R.M. was arrested in April 2020 after police launched an investigation into allegations of historical child sexual assault. He was found guilty on several counts at his trial in 2021. The victims, whose identities are protected by a publication ban, were between the ages of nine and 12 or 13, and six and 12, respectively, in the periods when the alleged conduct was said to have taken place.
Though named by the RCMP in his arrest, and in pre-conviction court documents, the man’s name is anonymized as R.M. in his appeal.
At trial he denied all allegations of sexual misconduct, Justice Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten wrote for the unanimous three-judge appeal panel.
The defence argued at trial that the complainants’ evidence lacked specificity, involved material inconsistencies and claims or descriptions of what occurred that were ‘implausible,’ DeWitt-Van Oosten said in the Dec. 11 decision.
R.M. successfully argued on appeal that the trial judge’s approach to the evidence was irreparably flawed and enabled guilty verdicts that overlooked serious credibility and reliability concerns regarding the testimony of witnesses. In its decision on Dec. 11, the Court of Appeal ordered the convictions on all counts be set aside, with an acquittal entered on one of them, and a new trial ordered for the rest.
