Yukoners will have to wait a little longer to find out what the final report of Yukon Ombudsman Jason Pedlar has to say about the Hidden Valley Elementary School (HVES)sexual abuse scandal.

Pedlar released a draft of his second report on the matter to the Department of Education on Tuesday.

This report provides a review, with recommendations, of whether the Department’s Safer Schools Action Plan is sufficient to avoid a recurrence of the communication failure to notify parents of these allegations in a timely manner.

 “This second, and final report, completes the Ombudsman’s investigation of a complaint that the department’s inordinate delay to inform HVES parents about the sexualized abuse of a student was unfair,” a news release states.

“The first report substantiated the communications failure, and the second report reviews the Safer Schools Action Plan and evaluates whether it addresses the unfairness identified.

“The department created this plan in response to an investigation it commissioned by Amanda Rogers (a Vancouver lawyer). It accepted all her recommendations.”

The report is not being released immediately because the ombudsman is required to provide the Department of Education with the opportunity to respond before it’s made available to the public.

“The ombudsman has requested that the Department of Education provide comments on this second report by Jan. 31, 2024. It is anticipated that the final report will be released to the public in February.”

In September, the Office of the Yukon Ombudsman issued the first of two reports into a complaint of unfairness against the Department of Education from a parent of a student at the school.

The Ombudsman’s investigation found that the government’s failure to communicate with parents at the school was “unfair, depriving parents of the opportunity to take timely action to help their children.”

The complaint was made to the Ombudsman in October 2021 by a parent of a student at HVES.

According to the report, the parent felt it was unfair that it took 19 months for the department to inform them, and other parents, about allegations of the sexualized abuse of a student by an educational assistant at the school.

The first report by Pedlar is fairly scathing.

In the document, he wrote, “The department did not share information about the allegations until it was made public in July 2021 by a CBC News story about a related lawsuit.

“The department did not follow any structured policy or process for communicating with parents, despite having such policies in place.

His criticism grew more pointed at that point.

“On the second issue, the investigation found that the department only began sharing information about the allegations because of the CBC News story, when it found itself unexpectedly having to react.

“Without this media story, it is likely that the department would have maintained its silence, perpetuating the unfairness.”

Cabinet ministers were not made aware of the situation until it was reported in the media, the report notes.

Education Minister Jeanie McLean said at the time that “mistakes were made in response to the 2019 Hidden Valley incident. The Government of Yukon has apologized – and will continue to apologize – to parents and students at Hidden Valley Elementary School, both for the incident and how it was handled.

“We acknowledge that more should have been done to inform parents and to support students and their families following the incident.”

McLean added in the statement that “we are learning from our mistakes.

In 2020, former educational assistant William Auclair-Bellemare, then 35, had pleaded guilty to sexual interference involving a child at the school and had later served a jail sentence.

Auclair-Bellemare had already pleaded guilty to sexual abuse charges regarding offences said to have occurred during his time at Hidden Valley during the 2010s. He spent six months in jail as a result.

In October of this year, Bellemare was acquitted on three charges.

Judge Peter Chisholm found reasonable doubt of Auclair-Bellemare’s guilt due to inconsistencies in witness testimony from the child involved and from the child’s family members.

The incidents in the new case were alleged to have occurred between 2015 and 2017, stemming from allegations made after the original charges were publicized.

The initial charges only came to light due to media reporting on a civil lawsuit by one of the parents.

Since then, both the RCMP and the Yukon government have come under criticism for the failure to notify parents at the school and the failure to seek to find out if more incidents had occurred.