Julia Peterson
Saskatoon StarPhoenix
Warning: This story contains details some readers may find upsetting.
More than a year after a former Neilburg, Sask. principal was convicted of sexually assaulting one of his students, a Court of King’s Bench judge has ordered a new trial.
At the start of the 2021 school year, when Geoff McFarlan was the principal of Neilburg’s village school, he was accused of groping a 12-year-old student’s buttocks while she was getting a binder from her locker between classes.
Testifying in provincial court in 2023, the girl said she was very upset about what happened, and that she knew it was an intentional touch and squeeze rather than an accidental bump.
She said she immediately called out and asked if anyone saw what happened because her back had been turned toward the crowded hallway and she had not seen who grabbed her.
Two other students in the hallway said they saw McFarlan touching the girl, and went to tell a teacher.
That teacher later told court that she had found the girl in her classroom “upset, in tears” and scared that no one would believe her.
In his 2023 ruling, provincial court Judge Kevin Hill sentenced McFarlan to six months in jail and two years of probation for sexual assault and sexual interference.
McFarlan appealed the conviction and sentence. Earlier this month, his appeal was granted by King’s Bench Justice Brenda Hildebrandt.
In her judgement, Hildebrandt said the original trial decision and sentencing had “errors in law, which include both a misapprehension of the evidence and a failure to address … the issue of reliability of witness testimony.”
She ruled the conviction must be set aside and the case must be heard again.
In her decision, Hildebrandt noted that the trial heard many of the school’s Grade 7 students had been playing a “butt-grabbing joke or game” with each other in September 2021.
She highlighted an argument McFarlan’s lawyer had made at the trial, describing how busy the school hallway had been that day, and said many students in the crowd had the “opportunity and motivation” to grope a classmate.
Hildebrandt also noted the girl said she never saw who touched her, and questioned the reliability of the other two students who testified at McFarlan’s trial.
There were “clear inconsistencies” between the students’ testimony, and the trial judge did not do enough to address them during the trial or in his reasons for the conviction, Hildebrandt concluded.
“I certainly recognize and appreciate the challenges in rendering reasons in cases involving inappropriate sexual conduct,” she wrote.
“However, in a situation such as this: where identity of the perpetrator is the central issue; the complainant did not see who touched her; events occurred in a crowded hallway at a time when a reasonable alternate explanation for the incident (and) the reliability of the two student witnesses is in issue … the sufficiency of the reasons provided (for the trial judge to find McFarlan guilty) must be questioned (and) I consider that there was also a misapprehension of the evidence.”
A new trial date has not yet been set.
