Stephanie McDonald
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 28, 2008

IQALUIT - Convicted pedophile Ed Horne was back in court last week, testifying that additional allegations of sexual assault against him are false.

In October, four complainants told the Nunavut Court of Justice that Horne had committed indecent acts against them in the 1970s and 1980s while they were young boys in Sanikiluaq, Cape Dorset, Kimmirut and Iqaluit.

Ed Horne: Between 1971 and 1985, he was a teacher and principal at elementary schools in Sanikiluaq, Iqaluit, Kimmirut, Grise Fiord and Cape Dorset. -

Horne was convicted of multiple counts of sexual assault in 1987 and 2000. Between 1971 and 1985, he was a teacher and principal at elementary schools in Sanikiluaq, Iqaluit, Kimmirut, Grise Fiord and Cape Dorset. During this time he sexually abused many of the children he supervised. Most of the victims were between the ages of nine and 11 when the abuse occurred.

In October, Crown Prosecutor Judy Chan closed her case.

Dressed in a grey zip-up sweater, blue pants tucked into white wool socks and hiking boots, the 64-year-old Horne, who now works as a bicycle courier in Toronto, took the stand on Jan. 24 to answer questions from his lawyer.

He stated that he had had time to methodically go through the events of his time in the North while in prison.

Horne said that he had "considerable memory" of his years in what was then the Northwest Territories, but with the passage of time and the fact that he is now "a very old man," he admitted that he couldn't remember everything.

"I'm not guilty. I did not commit the crimes I'm accused of," Horne told the court.

He said he remembered only two of the four men who came forward with accusations.

For an hour, Horne's lawyer, Tom Boyd of Yellowknife, asked him a series of questions with responses that suggested gaps and inaccuracies in the testimony of the four complainants.

Horne told the court that he never had pornographic videos in his house, as one complainant testified.

"They were not to my taste and were not available," he said.

He also said there was no place to hide lingerie in the schools he was teaching in, contrary to testimony that he had dressed young students up in it and had taken pictures of them.

Chan spent just over an hour cross-examining Horne.

"I committed some shocking and terrible crimes," he told the court, but repeatedly insisted that the current allegations against him were false.

Both Boyd and Chan gave their final arguments last Friday morning.

Boyd said the Crown had supplied insufficient evidence to prove Horne's guilt and had not provided any witnesses who could corroborate the complainants' testimony.

The witnesses themselves lacked credibility and had a financial motive for coming forward with the allegations, Boyd said. One complainant "put together a false story and he didn't do it accurately," Boyd said.

In Chan's final statement, she said each man had denied that compensation was a reason they brought allegations against Horne forward. In one case a man described a desire to make corrections in his life, while a lawyer approached another, she said. Chan said the boys "were perfect victims," as Horne admitted that he was listened to, trusted and respected.

Horne's case will be back in court on March 3 when Justice Robert Kilpatrick is expected to announce his decision. Horne is required to dial in from his Toronto home in March, but must be at a RCMP detachment when the decision comes down.

In 1987, Horne pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting eight children between 1983 and 1985, and was sentenced to six years in a federal prison.

In September 2000, he was sentenced to five more years in prison after pleading guilty to 20 of 72 sex-related offences.

In 2002, 82 of his victims agreed to a $21.5 million out-of-court settlement after suing the governments of the NWT and Nunavut for not protecting them from Horne.