N.W.T., ex-teacher sued over sex assaults

Eleven ex-students of Maurice Cloughley, a former teacher who pleaded guilty to sexually assaultingseveral pupilsbetween the 1960sand '80s in the North, are suing him and the N.W.T. government for damages.

Cloughley pleaded guilty on Feb. 12, 1996, to assaulting nine of his former students. But in recent civil court documents obtained by CBC News, Cloughley now claims he didn't actually assault two ofthe victims he was convicted of. Hesays hepleaded guilty based on a plea bargain he did for pragmatic reasons.

Cloughley was sentenced in Iqaluit to 10 years in jail for sex offences that took place between 1959 and 1987, when he was working as a teacher and school principal in the Northwest Territories and what is now Nunavut, as well as northern Manitoba.

The charges to whichhe pleaded guilty included seven counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault, mainly involving Inuit and Dene girls under age 14.

According to a statement of claim dated Feb. 15, 2008, 11 former students from Gameti, N.W.T. including two from Cloughley's criminalcase are seeking a total of $3 million in damages against Cloughley and the N.W.T. government. The lawsuit is based on incidentsalleged to havetaken place between 1986 and 1988. The claim states that the territorial government should have known when it hired Cloughley that he was likely going to harm students.

The lawsuit is going ahead even though the ex-students' lawyer, Teri Lynn Bougie, acknowledges it may be difficult to collect from Cloughley, who was allowed to return to his native New Zealand after serving about three years of his 10-year sentence.

"I suppose if there was a judgment against Mr. Cloughley and somebody had to go to New Zealand to collect on that, that would be a whole separate issue," Bougie told CBC News.

"But the action will continue against the [N.W.T.] commissioner in the interim."

The N.W.T. government has denied any wrongdoing in the case, and on Oct. 14, it filed a countersuit against Cloughley in order to recoup any damages if the former students win their court action.

No one from the territorial government was available to comment on Monday. A trial date has not been set.

Just before he was sentenced in 1996, Cloughley made an emotional apology to his nine victims and told the court that he would never forgive himself for what he had done.

In his statement of defence, filed in July, Cloughley denies sexually assaulting any of the former students involved in the lawsuit, including the two victims from the criminal trial.

The earlier guilty pleas, he wrote, were simply part of a plea bargain "done for pragmatism and on legal advice."