Man guilty of sexually abusing kids at public housing complex

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This article was published 13/08/2019 (1716 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man has been convicted of sexually abusing three children from the same Manitoba Housing complex over three years.

Provincial court Judge Kusham Sharma convicted Michel Bruneau, 28, of six sex offences involving two boys and one girl committed from 2013 to 2017 when the victims were between the ages of eight and 11. He was also found guilty of obstruction of justice and several count of breaching court orders.

Bruneau will be sentenced at a later date following the completion of a court-ordered pre-sentence report. The Free Press is not naming the complex in order to protect the victims’ identities.

Court heard Bruneau befriended the victims’ mothers to gain access to the children. At separate times, he moved in with the boys’ mothers and was considered a father figure. Bruneau repeatedly abused the children while showering together or sleeping in the same bed.

“He would crawl into bed, wait until I was asleep and do bad things,” one of the boys told police.

Sharma convicted Bruneau of sexually violating the young girl on two occasions, once during a visit to the library, and a second time when he kissed her in a schoolyard. Contact ceased when the girl’s mother, suspecting Bruneau was a predator, warned him to stay away from her daughter.

All three victims reported the abuse, resulting in Bruneau’s arrest in the fall of 2016. Released on bail, he was ordered to have no contact with the victims and stay away from the housing complex. But within weeks, Bruneau, disguised as a woman, returned to the complex and convinced the boys’ mothers that he had been wrongly accused. The two boys were convinced to recant their police statements at the same time Bruneau continued abusing them.

On one occasion, Bruneau took the younger boy to his Agnes Street apartment where he covered all the windows and proceeded to seriously sexually assault the boy.

Interviewed by police a third time, the boys later reaffirmed their original statements alleging Bruneau had repeatedly abused them.

Sharma described Bruneau’s testimony at trial earlier this year as “a moving target,” starting at a position of “complete denial” and progressing to an admission of sleeping and showering with the boys. Bruneau tried to explain away sexual contact as “accidental” and claimed one of the boys performed sex acts on him while he slept.

Sharma rejected Bruneau’s testimony as “inconsistent, self-serving and illogical.”

“His evidence is completely unreliable and unworthy of belief,” Sharma said.

At a separate court hearing in June, Bruneau was identified as the writer of an eight-page “confession” claiming responsibility for the sexual abuse of a young Lorette girl – the crime for which another man, Remi Dallaire, had been convicted. Dallaire and Bruneau had both been in custody at Headingley Correctional Centre at the same time. Bruneau later recanted, saying Dallaire had promised to pay him in return for claiming responsibility for Dallaire’s crimes.

Matt Gould, Dallaire’s lawyer had sought to use the confession to leverage reopening the case. Provincial court Judge Ken Champagne quashed the move, calling the confession a self-serving attempt to evade prosecution.

Champagne sentenced Dallaire to eight years in prison.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca