In C.O. v. Williamson and Trillium Lakes District School
Board an Ontario judge has found a school board vicariously
liable for historical sexual abuse of a student by her teacher.
This is an important decision as it imposes liability for the abuse
on the school board in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing on
the part of the school board. In a ruling on June 30, 2020 Justice
David Salmers of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice found both
the teacher Royce Galon Williamson and the Trillium Lakes District
School Board in Lindsay liable for the teacher's sexual
assaults on the student and ordered them to pay more than $500,000
in damages.
Williamson had not been criminally convicted of the assaults and
did not appear at the civil trial. The court accepted the
plaintiff's evidence of the repeated and brutal sexual
assaults. In fact, school administrators believed the
student's report of the assaults when she first made them in
1984 and although the teacher was
