A former Hidden Valley Elementary School educational assistant accused of child sexual abuse was acquitted on three charges on Friday.

Judge Peter Chisholm found reasonable doubt of William Auclair-Bellemare’s guilt due to inconsistencies in witness testimony from the child involved and from the child’s family members.

Auclair-Bellemare had already pleaded guilty to sexual abuse charges in 2021 regarding offences said to have occurred during his time at Hidden Valley during the 2010s. He spent six months in jail as a result.

The incidents in the new case were alleged to have occurred between 2015 and 2017 and stem from allegations made after the original charges were publicized.

The initial charges only came to light due to a news article reporting on a civil lawsuit by one of the parents.

Since then, both the RCMP and the Yukon government have come under criticism for the failure to notify parents at the school and the failure to seek to find out if more incidents had occurred.

Both the original charges and the charges in this case alleged Auclair-Bellemare had taken male elementary schoolchildren to a secluded room and told them to remove their pants and undergarments.

Once the original charges were publicized in the news media, the alleged victim’s mother in this case approached him and his sister to ask if anything had happened during their time in the school.

This was when the child revealed they had a memory of a similar occurrence, alleging that it was Auclair-Bellemare, and that he had also drawn a sketch of him with his pants off.

It was testified that the child said he wasn’t sure if it was a dream or not when he initially revealed the story because it was years earlier, but the sister said he had told her about it at the time.

The veracity of the sister’s memory was called into question, though, as she was between three and four years old when the child would have told her about the abuse. There were also some inconsistencies in her testimony.

Initially, the mother had testified she did not tell the child any details of the original charges – only asking if anything inappropriate or sexual occurred – but that was called into question during cross-examination.

She may have mentioned details about the previous case to the children.

Other inconsistencies were found between what the mother was supposed to have said to the child and with what the child said they were told and when.

Auclair-Bellemare chose not to testify in his own defence.

The Crown prosecutor requested a not-guilty verdict for a sexual assault charge due to lack of evidence, leaving two charges for the judge to decide on.

Chisholm then found Auclair-Bellemare not guilty of invitation to sexual touching and forcible confinement.

He wrote in his decision that he did believe the child’s testimony to be sincere, but all of the combined inconsistencies created a situation in which there was reasonable doubt about Auclair-Bellemare’s guilt.

Though he faces no more criminal charges, Auclair-Bellemare does have three pending civil lawsuits filed against him.