DLM
03-17-2005, 11:05 AM
Woman falsely accused of child sex abuse carries case to top court
OTTAWA (CP) - A Newfoundland woman suing Memorial University for $800,000 for wrongly labelling her a potential sexual abuser of children will get her day in the country's top court.
As a student at Memorial in 1994, Wanda Young wrote a paper on sex abuse. She included a passage - taken from a class textbook and duly noted in her bibliography - that featured a first-person account written by an anonymous sex abuser.
Her professor thought Young might be describing herself and reported her to the provincial child protection service.
No charges were ever laid, but Young's name was eventually passed on to the RCMP and entered in a database of suspected sex offenders.
She was denied permission to continue her studies to become a social worker, and was later turned down for a job because she had been red-flagged as a potential abuser.
She won a damage award of $839,400 from a civil jury in 2003, but the award was overturned the next year in a split decision by the provincial appeal court.
A key legal question was whether Memorial was protected from liability by the province's child welfare legislation, which requires anyone with suspicions of child sexual abuse to report the matter to authorities.
The Supreme Court of Canada, in a decision released without comment Thursday, agreed to review the case.
No date has been set for a hearing.
OTTAWA (CP) - A Newfoundland woman suing Memorial University for $800,000 for wrongly labelling her a potential sexual abuser of children will get her day in the country's top court.
As a student at Memorial in 1994, Wanda Young wrote a paper on sex abuse. She included a passage - taken from a class textbook and duly noted in her bibliography - that featured a first-person account written by an anonymous sex abuser.
Her professor thought Young might be describing herself and reported her to the provincial child protection service.
No charges were ever laid, but Young's name was eventually passed on to the RCMP and entered in a database of suspected sex offenders.
She was denied permission to continue her studies to become a social worker, and was later turned down for a job because she had been red-flagged as a potential abuser.
She won a damage award of $839,400 from a civil jury in 2003, but the award was overturned the next year in a split decision by the provincial appeal court.
A key legal question was whether Memorial was protected from liability by the province's child welfare legislation, which requires anyone with suspicions of child sexual abuse to report the matter to authorities.
The Supreme Court of Canada, in a decision released without comment Thursday, agreed to review the case.
No date has been set for a hearing.