A Metro Vancouver art instructor has been found not guilty of molesting a young student, despite the judge ruling that she strongly suspected the accused touched the girl “under her pants as she described”.
Art
Metro Vancouver art instructor found not guilty of child molestation, despite judge’s concerns with case
He was subsequently charged with touching a child (count one) and inviting a child to touch him (count two) for a sexual purpose — to which he pleaded not guilty.
The teacher said the only touching that occurred was to correct the student’s sitting position or posture as she drew and painted. He said he was a strict teacher who often admonished the student and had at one point put his hands on her torso to pull her back into her seat.
“I accept (the student’s) evidence that (the teacher) touched her inside her pants, in the way she described, during the final Sunday lesson and on at least one other occasion, likely a number of other occasions.”
In reference to the alleged penis touching, Holmes wrote “(the student’s) uncertainty or discomfort in remembering or describing this conduct do not reduce the credibility of her evidence.
“However, together with the associated absence of detail, they leave her evidence about this allegation as little more than a bare assertion of the conduct she described, with a little context against which to assess its reliability.”
“However, that is not the task. For an accused person to be found guilty of a criminal offence, the evidence must establish their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a very high standard. It does not require absolute certainty, but it does require more than strong suspicion.
“The evidence in this case leaves me strongly suspecting that (the teacher) touched (the student) under her pants as she described. However, the evidence does not give me confidence on that point beyond a reasonable doubt. (The teacher’s) evidence is not compelling, for the reasons I have given, but I cannot reject it entirely. It leaves me with a reasonable doubt.”
As a result, the teacher was found not guilty on both counts.
The accused name, the location of the art studio and the ages of all parties have not been reported due to a publication ban put in place to protect the girl’s identity.
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LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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