History of Upper Canada College - Scandals

Scandals

Upper Canada College has had a number of incidents in the decade following 1998 where staff were accused of statutory rape or of possessing child pornography. Only three ended in convictions. In early February 2007, the school mailed a letter to the entire UCC community apologizing for the sexual and physical abuse at the school and referring to the abuse of students as the most difficult issue the school has had to face in its 177-year history.

Clark Winton Noble

In 1998, Clark Winton Noble ("Knobby") was convicted of sexual assault stemming from an event that occurred in 1988 against a student at Appleby College where he was teaching. At that time he also admitted to an earlier attack on a UCC student in 1971, when he was a teacher at the school, though he was never convicted of that crime as the charges were withdrawn. The incident occurred off-campus, and the student never notified the school of what went on until Noble had resigned from the College. After learning of what went on, UCC informed Noble's subsequent employer and the Toronto Police.

Doug Brown

In 2003, UCC was embroiled in a very public class action lawsuit brought by eighteen students, led by a former pupil, who sued the school over sexual abuse by Doug Brown, a member of the faculty who taught history, geography and English at the prep school from 1975 until 1993. In October 2004, Doug Brown was found guilty of nine counts of indecent assault, while a housemaster and teacher at UCC. In January 2005, he was sentenced to three years in jail. An appeal is currently in the works. A resolution process was agreed upon to resolve the lawsuit. In a media release, UCC has announced that they "continue to offer support to those who were victims of abuse at the College, and are committed to a fair process for determining the school's responsibility to compensate those who were victimized by Doug Brown."

Ashley Chivers

In 2003, UCC graduate, and later teaching assistant, Ashley Chivers, then 28, who had been working at the school since 1996, was arrested on child pornography charges after police (acting on a tip from California law enforcement) found evidence of criminal images on his home computers. Chivers' duties at UCC included taking pictures at school events, though after a search of the 6,000 illegal images in his possession, Toronto police confirmed no UCC students, past or present, were evident. Chivers was convicted of one count of possessing child pornography, but not creating it, and was given an 18-month conditional sentence in October, 2004.

Lorne Cook

Lorne Cook, a teacher at UCC from 1978 to 1994, who was found guilty on October 12, 2006, of two counts of sexual assault on UCC students in 1991 and 1993. He was acquitted of one count of indecent assault and one count of sexual interference. The judge told the court that Cook touched his pupils inappropriately as a way to control and abuse the students without their consent, saying Cook has abused his "significant power in a way that violated the sexual integrity" of his pupils, and not for reasons of sexual gratification. In the November 2006 sentencing, he was spared jail time and instead sentenced to house arrest.

In response to the allegations put forward, UCC formed a review team to assess school policies, and create new ones, under the direction of Sydney Robins, QC, a former Justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and author of Protecting Our Students: A Review to Identify and Prevent Sexual Misconduct in Ontario Schools.

Adam Grant

On August 5, 2008, Adam Grant, a Security employee who worked at UCC for several years, was arrested for possession of child pornography. He was a security employee.