Student found guilty in sexual assault at Toronto’s St. Mike’s school

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A teenager who held down another student during a violent sexual assault at an all-boys Catholic school in Toronto wasn’t acting out of fear for his own safety and could have opted not to participate, a judge ruled in finding him guilty Friday.

The teen, who was a student at the time, was found guilty of gang sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon and assault in a November 2018 incident in which a boy was sexually assaulted in a locker room at St. Michael’s College School after a football game.

The attack was captured on video and shared on social media, sparking a police investigation and a national discussion on hazing in sports.

During the trial, the teen’s lawyers argued he should be acquitted because he feared he would become the victim if he didn’t participate. They said he was acting under duress when he held down the victim, who was sexually assaulted with a broom by two others.

The Crown argued, however, that there was no implied threat to the teen – who had gone to the locker room to see friends – that would meet the threshold for a defence of duress.

In a written ruling released Friday, Ontario Court judge Manjusha Pawagi sided with prosecutors, saying it would be “incredible” to suggest the accused would feel threatened by “calls from unidentified people gathered around the victim” that weren’t singling him out to join in.

“While I accept the defendant’s evidence that five people in the group on his shoulders and behind his back were yelling, ‘grab him’ and ‘hold him,’ the people making this alleged inferred threat did not use his name.

And they were not the other attackers … but rather bystanders, whom the defendant could not identify, who were not participating in the assault,” she wrote, “Presumably other people in the group heard those words as well. No other person in the group then acted on them to grab and hold the victim.”

The teen also faced the same charges in a similar incident against another student that fall, but those were withdrawn earlier this year after the judge found there was not enough evidence to proceed.

Even if the accused had, in fact, believed he faced an implicit threat, “the facts at their highest do not objectively establish that there was a threat directed at the defendant,” Pawagi wrote.

She also pointed to some discrepancies in the teen’s testimony, noting he initially told the court he walked into the circle of boys but later said he was pushed in.

The accused also described bullying at the private school as so pervasive and severe that students would “race” to leave after class to avoid being there without supervision.

But his own account of that night showed he lingered after the game and waited for coaches to leave after they initially turned him away from the locker room, the judge said.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Aug. 10. The judge will also hear submissions on whether some of the charges should stay because they overlap.

It was November 2018 when CityNews first broke the story of a student-on-student sexual assault with a broomstick inside Toronto’s prestigious St. Michael’s College School.

None of the minors involved in the trial, including the accused and several witnesses, can be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.