The trial of a former Anglican minister and convicted sex offender Ralph Rowe began Monday with guilty pleas to 20 charges of sexual offences involving First Nation boys in Northern Ontario in the 1970s and 80s. Rowe, 67, pled guilty in Kenora Superior Court to 10 counts of sexual assault and 10 counts of indecent assault for offences that took place in several remote northern communities between 1977 and 1987. These included the First Nation communities of Muskrat Dam, Wunnumin Lake and Big Trout Lake.

Crown attorney Peter Keen told the court Rowe’s guilty pleas were to one count for each of the 20 victims. As a result, 24 further counts — additional counts involving the same victims — were withdrawn by the Crown.
“There’s no point in getting into a fight over a line in his criminal record,” said Keen.

Keen’s co-counsel, Crown attorney Richard Cummine, told the court Rowe’s trial will now be on 12 counts involving five different complainants, whittled down from a total of 56 charges originally on the indictment.

Superior Court Justice Erwin Stach adjourned the proceedings until Tuesday morning when victim impact statements from many of the 20 victims will be read in court. Several of the victims and their families travelled to Kenora for the proceedings this week.

Rowe, who now lives in Surrey, B.C., was previously convicted for similar sexual offences, in the same First Nation communities, in 1994 in a Wunnumin Lake courtroom.

He was convicted on 27 counts of indecent assault and one count of common assault involving the sexual abuse of 16 aboriginal boys between 1976 and 1982. He was sentenced to six years in jail, of which he served four and a half years.

Stach said because of the plea agreement made in 1994, Rowe will not be sentenced to additional jail time for these 20 convictions, only concurrent time on his previous jail sentence.

The judge explained that because the offences committed against these latest 20 victims were of a similar nature to those Rowe was sentenced to in 1994, he would honour the plea agreement made between the Crown and Rowe’s defence counsel at the time.

However, he said for charges of a more serious nature, the court could impose additional jail time for Rowe upon conviction.

The 20 counts Rowe pled to on Monday involved fondling of the young boys to having the boys masturbate him. The age of the boys ranged from 5-15 years old.

In most of the incidents Rowe had been entrusted as a caregiver to the boys, who were regularly sleeping overnight at his Anglican Church Mission House in the communities. In other instances, Rowe, who was also a Boy Scout Master, sexually assaulted the boys on Boy Scout camping trips while sleeping in tents or cabins.

Keen told the court, when describing one case from Wunnumin Lake, that several boys would regularly stay at Rowe’s Mission House each night to take part in church or Boy Scout activities. He said Rowe would often pick different boys to come and sleep in his bed each night when these offences would take place.