Northern governments face lawsuit over sex crimes against students

The governments of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are facing their second lawsuit in three years involving sex crimes against former students.

Fifteen people want compensation for the abuse they say they suffered as children from Maurice Cloughley, a former teacher and principal.

In 1996, Cloughley pleaded guilty and was convicted on nine counts of sexual assault. He was sentenced to 10 years.

He worked for almost 30 years in eight communities in northern Manitoba and the former Northwest Territories, including Nunavut.

Cloughley, a native of New Zealand who moved to northern Canada in the late 1950s.

His trial was told Cloughley used his position to commit sex-related offences against girls and some boys who were his students in elementary school.

Photo albums seized by police at Cloughley's home contained hundreds of pictures of naked children, mainly from the North.

Newfoundland and Labrador lawyer Geoffrey Budden, representing the claimants, said children in the North were especially vulnerable to pedophiles because of language barriers and cultural differences.

"The impact on a child is not just what was physically done to them but the whole breach of trust and the sense of betrayal by their teacher who's a person that they've been taught to respect and to believe in."

Last year, Budden won a $21.5 million settlement for victims of another northern teacher and sex offender, Edward Horne.

In the 1970s and '80s, Horne moved around Nunavut communities, assaulting mainly Inuit boys.

Budden said the two cases are similar.