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(KIM ANDERSON / iNFOnews.ca)

A 70-year-old former Clearwater man has been convicted of sexual assault and sexual interference of two young girls in his home in the early 2000s.

The two women who testified against him are now in their early 30s but were between the ages of 11 and 15 when the crimes were committed.

According to a recently published decision, Wayne Thomas Taylor’s home appeared to be a refuge for many neighbourhood kids. Young boys and girls often hung out at his home, watched television, played with his dogs and cats and helped him build things. Some of them also smoked marijuana, drank alcohol and used cocaine.

After keeping it secret for 20 years, one of the women told her husband what happened between 2002 and 2005. She later reconnected with a friend from that same time on Facebook and they realized they had similar experiences. Then they went to the police.

Their stories are quite similar. They both saw Taylor as like a “grandfather”. He let them hang around, sometimes cooked for them and they could do as they pleased. They liked it there and would go sometimes as often as three times per week.

They were often joined at his home by various other kids, mostly young boys. Their interactions with Taylor started off innocent before progressing from sexual touching to sexual assault — rape. Justice Carla Forth suggested he was simply grooming them.

“(One of the complainants) testified that when she was 14, Mr. Taylor told her that he was waiting until she was 16 and then he was going to get her pregnant. He thought the pills he was taking made him sterile,” Forth wrote.

When one of them got a little older, he started supplying alcohol and marijuana in exchange for sexual favours.

He told them not to tell anyone, though on two occasions one of them did. One of the complainants said she told one of the boys associated to the home and he told Taylor, who got angry.

She testified she also told a social worker at one point but the social worker didn’t do anything. Both women described being impacted by post-traumatic stress disorder ever since.

Taylor denied any touching and had a number of reasons for why it couldn’t have happened but Forth saw right through it. 

"I reject the accused’s evidence as unworthy of belief,” she said.

Taylor will be sentenced at a later date.

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