Nunavut sex-assault lawsuit advancing: lawyer

A lawsuit is moving ahead against the Nunavut and Northwest Territories governments over a former teacher convicted of sexually assaulting some of his students.

Thirty-five claimants are accusing the governments of not protecting them from Maurice Cloughley, who pleaded guilty in 1996 to sex offences involving nine former students between 1959 and 1987.

Cloughley was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the offences, which took place when he was working as a teacher and principal in the Northwest Territories and what is now Nunavut.

Filed in the fall of 2008, the lawsuit involves former students from several Nunavut communities — including Clyde River, Resolute Bay, Grise Fiord and Arctic Bay — when those communities were still part of the N.W.T.

"They were all abused while children living in what is now Nunavut," Geoff Budden, a Newfoundland lawyer representing the former students, told CBC News on Monday.

However, Budden added, "a number of the people from Resolute are now back in the Inukjuak area," referring to a community in northern Quebec's Nunavik region.

Gathering testimony

Budden said his team has been travelling to communities to interview clients and gather information. The claimants are mostly women, but a few men are involved, he added.

The team will be meeting with claimants in one more community, then all the gathered information will be sent to government lawyers.

Budden said he hopes the case will be settled out of court.

The Northwest Territories government also faces a lawsuit from 11 former students in Gameti, N.W.T., who claim Cloughley sexually assaulted them when they were children in the late 1980s.

The Gameti lawsuit names Cloughley as well as the N.W.T. government as defendants, while Budden's lawsuit does not name Cloughley.

"We chose not to go after Mr. Cloughley [because] our practice at our firm is really not to sue the perpetrators because they typically don't have assets," Budden said.

"Under our legal theories, the government would normally be responsible for the actions of their employees."

Cloughley was allowed to return to his native New Zealand after serving three years of the 10-year sentence.