After reviewing the evidence put before him earlier this week, Yukon Supreme Court Justice Roland Haines found Dudley Taylor guilty this morning.

Taylor faced three charges of sexual assault against two boys and a girl, all under 13 at the time the charges were laid in March of 1990.

One more charge was added this month, when the youngest brother of the three victims came forward with another accusation.

"I reject the testimony of Mr. Taylor," Haines announced. "His denial cannot stand against the weight of the complainants' testimony."

Taylor took the stand in his own defence on Tuesday afternoon. He was asked, among other things, to explain why he illegally fled to the United States in November 1990.

Initially, Taylor stated he left to visit a sick cousin, and also on the advice of a friend, the judge said, summarizing Taylor's position.

During cross-examination, Taylor said it was a lawyer who gave him the advice to leave, saying that it would "take a lot" to win the case and that judges generally believe children's testimonies.

Taylor said he could not remember the name of the lawyer who allegedly gave him this advice nor the location of the law office.

The judge also highlighted Taylor's claim he did not understand the seriousness of the charges against him.

After Taylor was arrested in Washington state, where he had been living under his brother's name for almost 20 years, he was brought back to Canada and interviewed by the RCMP officer who had inherited the case file and ultimately helped locate Taylor.

When the officer told Taylor he was accused of of having anal intercourse with three children, he replied: "No kidding, I didn't know that."

He stuck by this statement when he took the stand, saying he never heard the details of the charges and was not at the preliminary hearing held in May 1990.

All three children testified at the hearing and described the abuse – repeated sexual assaults which included anal penetration and oral sex.

Court documents from that time show he was at the hearing.

Taylor also told the officer, and then the court, that he planned to return to Canada to "deal with the charges" and claimed he would have willingly returned this spring had he not been arrested.

"What it is now? May, June?" he said under cross-examination. "Yeah, yeah, I'd be here by now."

While Taylor's lawyer tried to shed doubt on the testimonies of the four complainants, Haines found "the evidence of each ... was compelling and convincing."

The many inconsistencies between this week's testimonies and the evidence given to police and at the preliminary hearing in 1990 were understandable, the judge said.

"Time has inevitably eroded their memories to some extent," Haines found.

Overall, he accepted the evidence against Taylor as "fundamentally accurate."

He said "each (complainant) testified in a straightforward manner," and noted that although all were reluctant witnesses, they appeared voluntarily.

As the two older brothers said on the stand, they came because they didn't want Taylor to hurt anyone else.

Haines rejected the suggestion that the most recent allegation from the youngest brother was made at his mother's urging.

Haines was to sentence Taylor, who has been in jail since his arrest in Washington last November, later this afternoon.

Taylor said nothing when the judge handed down the guilty verdict.

None of his victims were in the courtroom to hear the decision.

Go online to www.whitehorsestar.com to read more on this story from Wednesday's edition.