Coach says he was not aware of sex assault at St. Michael’s College until video of incident

A football coach at a prestigious Toronto private school says he wasn’t aware of any incidents of violence or bullying there until he saw a video of a sexual assault on a student.

Daniel Lumsden took the stand today at the trial of a teen boy accused of sexually assaulting two fellow students at St. Michael’s College School in the fall of 2018.

Lumsden told a virtual court he was asked in November 2018 to go to the principal’s office to help identify players from one of the school’s teams in a video of an incident that took place that month.

He testified he did not recognize the victim but did manage to identify some players. None of the people he identified in court were the accused.

The coach said that before seeing the video, he had never witnessed any such incidents – or even any hazing or roughhousing – at the school, nor had he heard of any.

The accused teen has pleaded not guilty to two counts each of gang sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, and assault with a weapon-related to two incidents in which students were sexually assaulted with a broom handle.

Under cross-examination, Lumsden, who also teaches accounting at the school, denied previously hearing about or seeing a video or image of an incident in October in which a player was sexually assaulted.

He also denied allegations that he instructed students during study hall to delete that image or video from their phones.

“That’s a lie,” the coach said. “It never occurred, that never happened in study hall, no.”

In December, the court viewed two videos in which one of the complainants recounted the incidents to a police investigator.

In one video, he described being sexually assaulted with a broom handle by a group of students in the school’s locker room in October 2018.

In the second recording, he recalled seeing a group sexually assault another student in a similar way the following month, also in the locker room.

The complainant did not mention the accused when discussing the October incident but alleged the teen held back the arms of the victim in the November assault.

The teen who testified was initially one of the suspects in the November 2018 incident, but the charges against him were dropped.

Three teens have pleaded guilty to sexual assault with a weapon and assault with a weapon for their roles in the incidents and have been sentenced to two years of probation.

One of them also pleaded guilty to making child pornography for recording one of the sex assaults in a video that was then widely distributed.

Another student received a two-year probationary sentence with no jail time after pleading guilty. The charges against another student, aside from the one who testified, were withdrawn.

None of the teens involved in the case – which includes the accused, the complainants, and some of the witnesses – can be identified because they were underage at the time.