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The 1987 conviction for spanking never came up when, years later, former Ampleforth pupils accused Sheppard of sexually abusing them during his brief stint at the school. For Steacy Easton, the victim in the Saint John’s case, hearing Sheppard admit his past conviction brought a flood of emotions
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Warning: this story deals with sexual abuse.
Paul Sheppard stood before a judge in a small-town Ontario courtroom, his young life and career seemingly in tatters.
Just months before, Sheppard had been a police officer and a respected volunteer in the Stratford community. Now the 23-year-old was a convicted criminal who had admitted to spanking the bare bottoms of five boys he met through his police work.
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The judge, however, had no harsh words for Sheppard.
“I accept everything in the defence’s submission,” said Judge Gordon McConnell, according to a Jan. 20, 1987, story in the Waterloo Region Record.
“I also accept, and it’s important for the community to accept, that this man was really sincere in his endeavour to direct the activities of these young people.”
After acknowledging the spankings were “not the manner” boys should be “dealt with,” McConnell turned to Sheppard.
“Your pre-sentence report and everything I have heard suggests to me that your future is still bright enough for you to make your place in the world,” McConnell said. Sheppard left court that day with a suspended sentence and two years probation after a joint submission from Crown and defence. Five counts of sexual assault were withdrawn.
Sheppard did indeed make his place in the world. Within a year of his conviction, he was training to become a teacher. By 1989, he was overseas, teaching at England’s prestigious Ampleforth boys school. A few months later, he took a job at Saint John’s School of Alberta, a private boarding school that served as a launchpad for his career as an international educator. He went on to earn five university degrees including a doctorate in educational management.
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The 1987 conviction for spanking never came up when, years later, former Ampleforth pupils accused Sheppard of sexually abusing them during his brief stint at the school. Nor did it arise when a former Saint John’s student claimed Sheppard molested them during spankings — which ended in Sheppard’s only sex abuse conviction.
It only came to light last month, when the Parole Board of Canada granted the now 61-year-old Sheppard early release on the Saint John’s charges, despite his continued insistence there was nothing sexual about the abuse he perpetrated there.
For Steacy Easton, the victim in the Saint John’s case, hearing Sheppard admit his past conviction brought a flood of emotions. The fact it appears to have done nothing to limit Sheppard’s access to kids has Easton wondering whether their own abuse might have been prevented.
‘Go for it’
In the legal reports written since he was convicted of molesting Easton, Sheppard has always described a happy, healthy childhood.
Sheppard was adopted as an infant by a family from Niagara Falls. At his parole hearing, he described his late father — a Second World War veteran and a prominent lawyer — as a tough but fair disciplinarian. Whenever he got in trouble, his father would sit him down and say: “‘I don’t want to hear excuses, however I’ll accept an explanation, provided it shows me you have gained insight,’” Sheppard said. Sometimes, punishment involved spankings.
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Sheppard grew up attending boarding schools. Much of his secondary schooling took place at Ridley College in St. Catharines. He transferred to a high school in Niagara Falls for Grade 13. His senior quote in the 1982 yearbook reveals a mischievous streak: “This Ridley defector soon learned the Gr. 13 code of ethics: Go for it. They can’t get us, we’ve already graduated!”
In his doctoral thesis, Sheppard describes a meeting with his housemaster at the end of his high school career.
“They ‘mapped out’ what they felt was the best career path for me, a career in education,” he wrote in 2012. “Not surprisingly, at the age of 18, I went as far in the opposite direction as I could only to come full circle some five years later.”
Sheppard joined the Stratford police a few years after high school. It was 1985, the year Shepard turned 22. A brief item in the Oct. 3, 1986, edition of The Record was the first notice something was amiss.
“A city police officer, who resigned from the force here earlier this week, faces 11 criminal charges,” it reads. The deputy police chief said the charges “related to incidents which occurred over the past 15 months and involved a number of young males from Stratford and the surrounding area.” Sheppard was charged with six counts of assault and five counts of sexual assault.
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Sheppard pleaded guilty a few months later. He admitted to spanking six boys aged 10-14 between fall 1985 and summer 1986. Sheppard met the boys’ mothers either on the job or through youth organizations. Most were single parents. In five of the cases, Sheppard told the boys to drop their shorts and spanked them on their bare bottoms “while delivering a lecture on their behaviour,” The Record reported. Sometimes Sheppard used his hand, others a belt or a yardstick.
In five of the cases, Sheppard spanked the boys in their bedrooms, the other on a bus after a youth group trip. The boys had misbehaved by “stealing or swearing,” The Record said. One case involved a “spanking rehearsal” — which the paper did not describe — and a wrestling match. One of the boys was spanked four times, while the others were “isolated incidents.”
Sheppard’s lawyer, Rick Linley, told Judge McConnell his client was motivated by genuine concern for the boys’ well-being. He also organized outings and bought them clothes. There was “no hint of deviant behaviour,” Linley said — his client was merely a “responsible citizen” who was “somewhat naive and misguided.” Nevertheless, Sheppard had suffered a “devastating public humiliation and the destruction of his career.”
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He would soon have another.
Overseas
Sheppard was enrolled in university at the time of the sentencing hearing. He previously completed an arts degree at Brock University in 1986. He later moved to Newfoundland, where he earned two more degrees including a Bachelor of Education from Memorial University in 1989. In 1988, he married. His wife was a school teacher, and they had a son. They separated in early 1989 after seven months.
Sheppard moved to Ampleforth for a teaching contract the same year, around the time he completed probation on the Stratford charges. He left at the end of term with a positive reference. Brian Beresh, Sheppard’s Alberta lawyer, said Sheppard had been hired to fill in for a single term and that there were no complaints of sexual impropriety at the time — though Ampleforth’s headmaster did field concerns about “Dr. Sheppard’s teaching and pastoral methods.”
Nearly 25 years passed before allegations about Sheppard arose.
Sheppard was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport in 2014. By that time, he had worked at schools in South Korea, the Dominican Republic, Kuwait, Congo, Cameroon, and Singapore.
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Sheppard was initially charged with four counts of indecent assault involving three former Ampleforth pupils, who came forward after another alumnus died by suicide in 2013. Before he died, the former student told his sister Sheppard had raped him, the parole board decision states.
Only one of the former students made it to trial, however. The man claimed Sheppard had touched his genitals while spanking his bare bottom. Another said Sheppard held him down and straddled him on a “punishment” run, while another said Sheppard kissed a sleeping boy. The trial judge, however, concluded those cases did not meet the legal definition of indecency and tossed them.
Sheppard was acquitted of the remaining charge and returned to Canada.
‘He has no criminal record’
Easton went to police in 2017 after reading about Sheppard’s U.K. trial. Two years later, Sheppard was arrested at his home in St. Catherines, Ont. Police did not issue a press release, and he was granted bail.
Sheppard’s trial began in Wetaskiwin, Alta., in 2021. It cast back to the 1993-94 school year at Saint John’s, an Anglican-affiliated boarding school southwest of Edmonton.
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Saint John’s and its sister schools in Manitoba and Ontario were controversial — notorious in some circles and acclaimed in others. They were founded by the late conservative publisher Ted Byfield and were known for their strict regime of corporal punishment and wilderness training. Boys spent the year racing on snowshoes and concluded the term with a gruelling weeks-long canoe trip. One former pupil described Saint John’s as a cross between “Lord of the Flies” and “Stand by Me.” For some, it was Saint John’s or juvie.
Sheppard took an interest in Easton in Grade 7. Now a 43-year-old author and artist who uses they/them pronouns, Easton was an isolated kid. They struggled to keep up in the wilderness activities and became a target for bullies. Easton and another student recalled Sheppard insisting on watching them shower.
Sheppard also singled out Easton for discipline. At Saint John’s, teachers were allowed to “swat” misbehaving boys with wooden paddles. The spankings usually took place in the duty master room adjacent to the boys’ dorm, where Sheppard sometimes slept. Easton said Sheppard spanked them more than 30 times during the school year.
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Sheppard eventually began to sexually abuse Easton, both during the spankings and in the woods outside the school. Justice Debra Yungwirth concluded Sheppard sexually touched Easton around 10 times. For a troubled kid in a school that was often frightening, those swat sessions felt different.
“The school was without a lot of tenderness,” Easton testified. “And that moment was one of the few times in my schooling at Saint John’s that I felt like a certain amount of care or affection was being given.”
The jury found Sheppard guilty of sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching. Yungwirth sentenced him to six years in prison. Among those who provided reference letters was Allan Fradsham, a former Saint John’s parent and Alberta Court of Justice judge who also gave character evidence at Sheppard’s U.K. trial. At no point was Sheppard’s Ontario conviction discussed.
“He has no criminal record,” Yungwirth wrote in her sentencing decision.
Out on bail
Sheppard was not sent to prison right away. The court granted him bail pending appeal, and he remained on release for nearly two years. While Sheppard was on bail, tragedy struck.
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Sheppard’s partner, 28-year-old Liam Coward, died in hospital on New Year’s Eve 2022. Coward’s death was widely reported due to his work with St. Catharines’ LGBTQ2S+ Advisory Committee. He also worked as a staffer for two NDP MPPs.
Sheppard spoke at Coward’s funeral. Standing at the pulpit in a three-piece suit, he described first meeting Coward in person almost 10 years prior, when Coward took the bus to meet him in Niagara. Sheppard spoke about Coward’s commitment to fighting for marginalized groups. He also addressed the fact that Coward — a board member with a Niagara region harm reduction non-profit — died of an overdose.
“Liam’s mistake will not define him, nor should it,” he said.
The parole board twice commented on the 30-year age difference between Sheppard and his late partner, but concluded: “there is nothing to suggest that (Sheppard) engaged in any criminal activity while in this relationship, and it appears that this was a supportive and loving relationship.”
Sheppard’s appeals continued to wind through the courts. The Alberta Court of Appeal dismissed his conviction appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the case, eliminating any chance the jury’s verdict might be overturned.
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Sheppard’s sentence appeal was another story. The court heard arguments last September in Edmonton. With his final appeal heard, Sheppard surrendered himself and began his prison term.
A few months later, he received good news.
In a 2-1 decision, the majority justices cut Sheppard’s sentence to just under four years. Justice Thomas Wakeling said Yungwirth failed to properly lay out the crimes for which she sentenced Sheppard, or explain how she concluded Sheppard molested Easton on 10-12 occasions.
Maybe he’s deliberate and evil and manipulative and knew exactly what he was doing and knew how to get away with it. Or, he thought he was being helpful and thought he was being tender and loving in his way.
Steacy Easton
The only “safe” facts that could be relied upon, Wakeling said, were those “that are essential to a conviction for one count of sexual inference — the offender touched the victim’s penis once — and one count of invitation to sexual touching — the offender invited the victim to touch the offender’s penis once.”
Justice Kevin Feehan concurred in the result. He added: “The evidence before the court was that Dr. Sheppard had no prior criminal record, complied with all conditions of his release pretrial, and had not been convicted of any offence other than these convictions.”
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1987 resurfaces
With the shorter sentence, Sheppard became eligible for parole in 2024. He appeared before the parole board by video July 30 from the minimum security Joyceville Institution in Ontario.
The hearing began with a presentation from a parole officer who, for the first time since the case began, brought up Sheppard’s 1987 conviction. Easton remembers feeling “this weird relief” as the parole officer spoke.
“It just clicked,” they said. “To know there was a cluster of people this happened to, and they were willing to say it out loud, meant that any space I had for doubt was eliminated. It was like ‘oh, this absolutely happened, it’s a pattern of behaviour, and he knew very early on how to work the angles to get what he wanted.’”
According to the parole officer, Sheppard became “overly involved” with “disciplining and directing” the children of several single mothers. When a supervisor learned of Sheppard’s behaviour, he told him to “disengage.” He was charged after another officer caught wind of “subsequent communication” between Sheppard and one of the moms. The parole officer did not say where he obtained details of the 1987 conviction, beyond saying it is now on Sheppard’s file.
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Sheppard told the board he met the mothers on duty, but he could not recall specifics. “They were single mothers struggling to parent,” he said. “I had this naiveté and belief I could solve all the problems. I offered if I could help, I would.” When one of the mothers contacted him, he would return while off duty and spank the boy.
“I realize as I look back on it, it was completely inappropriate for me to be involved in those families,” he said.
“And your position in those offences is there was no sexual intent, no sexualized behaviour?” a parole board member asked.
“That’s correct,” Sheppard replied.
Sheppard maintained the same stance when it came to the sex offences against Easton. While admitting he was “blameworthy,” he accepted responsibility only for the corporal punishment.
“I am ashamed of how I treated (Easton),” Sheppard said. “I was ignorant to a person struggling with their identity, who was obviously in pain and suffering in a school that was, on many levels, incapable of supporting them.”
Correctional Service Canada did not support Sheppard’s release, given his refusal to admit the sexual nature of his crimes. In its view, despite Sheppard’s willingness to take programming in prison, he remains an untreated sex offender.
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The St. Catherines parole office, on the other hand, supported release. So did the parole board, which concluded that despite Sheppard’s “strained accountability,” any risk he posed could be managed in a halfway house. The board did express concern about his desire to honour his late partner by volunteering with marginalized groups, calling it “unhealthy and risk-related,” and forbade him from unsupervised contact with boys under the age of 18.
Sheppard exhaled and buried his face in his hands when the board reached its decision.
For Easton, Sheppard’s story is as much about the institutions as it is about the individual. “It was easy for him to do what he wanted to do, because of his affiliation with places of power,” they said.
Easton spoke out against sending Sheppard to prison, but nevertheless sees a pattern of leniency: the judge who believed Sheppard had good intentions when he spanked the Stratford boys, the system that allowed him to become a teacher, the appeal court that took a charitable view of his crimes, the parole board that released him despite his minimizations.
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“Maybe he’s deliberate and evil and manipulative and knew exactly what he was doing and knew how to get away with it,” Easton said. “Or, he thought he was being helpful and thought he was being tender and loving in his way.
“But that wouldn’t have mattered if the regulatory agencies that were supposed to weed out people like him were successful in their jobs.”
As for his time overseas, Sheppard said his roles at the international schools were administrative and did not involve direct contact with children. The parole officer said this was contradicted, in part, by an employment history Sheppard provided.
The Supreme Court, and a lawsuit
Why Sheppard’s 1987 conviction never came to light during his Alberta case remains unclear.
Drew Gillespie, the prosecutor, declined to comment, citing ongoing appeals. Sheppard himself also declined comment.
Postmedia requested files from the Stratford courthouse on the case, but a court official said no information has been retained. If the Crown proceeded with a summary conviction, the information is held for just seven years, the official said. If it was a more serious indictable offence, the records are kept for 40 years.
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“However, even if it was indictable, the matter has been purged from our system, so there is no way to find the file number,” the official said, adding the court’s electronic records system removes files after a period of time.
The parole board decision, for its part, specifically references a “criminal record,” while Stratford Police confirmed Sheppard’s 1987 conviction remains in the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) database.
It is also unclear whether the conviction posed any impediment to Sheppard’s becoming a teacher. The Ontario Ministry of Education, which administered teacher certification at the time, did not have any information about whether Sheppard taught in that province. The Newfoundland and Labrador education ministry said it does not comment on whether a person has been granted a teaching certificate “for privacy reasons.”
Postmedia asked both Ampleforth and the Saint John’s School of Alberta Legacy Foundation whether administrators were aware of Sheppard’s 1987 conviction. Ampleforth did not answer by press time, citing the summer holiday. The Saint John’s group did not respond.
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Canadian schools began to phase out corporal punishment in the 1970s. It was banned in educational institutions entirely in 2004. Sheppard claims he never inflicted corporal punishment again after leaving Saint John’s in 1994. He later returned and served as headmaster until 2002. The school closed in 2008 citing declining enrolments.
Sheppard’s legal saga is not over. The Crown appealed his reduced sentence to the Supreme Court of Canada, which agreed to hear the case. Hearing dates have not been scheduled.
There is also a lawsuit from a Stratford man who claims Sheppard molested him when Sheppard volunteered with a local charity.
In a statement of claim — which contains allegations not proven in court — Cory Bernier claims Sheppard sexually abused him in 1985, when Bernier was nine. Bernier was raised by a single mother, and Sheppard was assigned him through Big Brothers Big Sisters.
The claim says Sheppard took Bernier on 10-12 outings to a local park. Each time, Sheppard allegedly kissed him on the lips. Bernier claims Sheppard also confined him to his vehicle and molested him.
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“The plaintiff could not tolerate any further abuse and began to cry uncontrollably and insisted that the defendant Sheppard cease the sexual molestation,” the claim reads.
“In order to keep the plaintiff silent, the defendant Sheppard told the plaintiff that his mother would be physically harmed if the abuse was reported to anyone.”
In an interview, Bernier said Sheppard told his mom he was “unmanageable.” He began to act out in school — the start of a downward trajectory that in adulthood led to stints in jail and rehab. He came to hate authority figures.
“He told me I was unmanageable,” Bernier said. “From that moment, it put in my head, ‘maybe I am unmanageable.’”
Bernier doesn’t blame Sheppard for the life he’s led. “I know right from wrong,” he said. “But I do know that he did take my innocence, and he did have a big impact on why I am the way I am.”
Sheppard’s statement of defence acknowledges working as Bernier’s Big Brother, but says he “never” touched him sexually and denies any wrongdoing.
jwakefield@postmedia.com
x.com/jonnywakefield
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