Hidden Valley investigator asks parents to contact her

The investigator hired by the Yukon government to look into the Hidden Valley Elementary School sexual abuse case is hoping parents will come forward to talk to her about what happened.

B.C. lawyer Amanda Rogers was hired last month to look into the "internal and inter-departmental processes" that came after an educational assistant at the Whitehorse school was first accused of sexually abusing a student in his care in November 2019.

Rogers says her work is already "well underway," and that she's met with many civil servants and begun reviewing correspondence and asking for documents.

Her goal is to figure out what went wrong. Both the government and the RCMP have acknowledged that mistakes were made and have apologized, and the government has frequently been put on the hot seat by opposition politicians and parents who say they should have been informed about the case much earlier.

"I'm still at the fact-gathering stage. But I think, you know, it's clear that there were policy gaps here," Rogers said on Tuesday.

"There really need to be clear policies and procedures in place to facilitate who needs to know about this and who needs to coordinate the response, to make sure that all the various departments are doing the things they need to do and are doing it in a coordinated way, to make sure that there aren't pieces that are left out." 

Rogers's is just one of several investigations now underway focused on the Hidden Valley case. The RCMP, Yukon's ombudsman, and the territory's child and youth advocate are also looking into it.

Rogers says she wants to hear from parents, and it's up to them to contact her. She says that's because she's been hired as an independent investigator.

"There were lengthy conversations about how to ensure the integrity of this review and the independence of this review. My terms of reference make it very clear that while I'm paid for by the government, I don't work for the government," she said.

"The government can't share personal information about parents with me. And so it means that I am completely reliant on them [parents] to get in touch with me."

Rogers said she was planning to come to Yukon this month to meet with parents and others, but Yukon's COVID-19 state of emergency forced her to postpone. In the meantime, she's planning some meetings by Zoom.

She's aiming to have her fact-finding done by the end of December and then issue her report in January. She's asking any Hidden Valley parents to reach her at arogers@arboffice.ca.

"To any parents who want to participate in this review, your participation is so vital, to hear what happened from your perspective, what you feel ought to have happened, what the impact of what happened is on you and your family. I want to hear that," she said.