Child sex offenders from Six Nations whose convictions made the news

Trigger Warning: the details in the following story detail the convictions of child sex offenders and may be disturbing to some of our readers. 

SIX NATIONS – Here are some of the details of child sex offenders from Six Nations whose trial and convictions made the news.

David Maracle was convicted of kidnapping, sexual assault and other crimes relating to attacks on women in Brantford in the 1980s and 90s. The final attack was in 1997 when he kidnapped and sexually assaulted a 14 year old girl at gunpoint. Maracle was designated a dangerous offender with a high likelihood of reoffending in 2009.

Charles Robert Jamieson was already a multiple sex offender in Ontario by the time he was 19 years old. Eleven years later, he was declared a dangerous offender in a BC Supreme Court ruling after a 2003 drug and alcohol induced crime spree where five women were raped, beaten and held at knifepoint. During his interview with police he claimed he didn’t rape one of the victims because she was “too ugly” and denied raping another one who he had beaten to the point of unconsciousness. “How can I sexually assault a lady who is unconscious?”

In 1999, James H. Powless was arrested and later indicted on 34 counts of rape, abuse and sodomy against a 15 year old disabled child. The arrests came after videotape of the assaults was uncovered and reported to police. He pled guilty to two counts of first degree sodomy and was sentenced to 45 years in state prison. The case was re-opened in 2006 and he was re-sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released in January 2019 and has been labelled a Level 3 sexually violent offender and will remain a lifelong registrant of the sex offender registry.

In 2011, a Six Nations man was convicted of sexually assaulting two young females, aged 10 and 11 years old. A few years later the same man was convicted of sexually assaulting children in a second instance, this time two teenage girls — one of whom became pregnant during an assault. He was released from jail in 2015 and resumed residency on Six Nations. There was no general public announcement made and no details for neighbours about the conditions of his release. His name was not released to protect the identity of the victims.

In 2012 Ronald Burning, Pastor of the Johnsfield Baptist Church, was formally charged with 19 counts of sex crimes and assault against children and teen parishioners of his church dating as far back as 1971. He was found guilty on 13 counts and sentenced to ten years on 3 of those counts, seven years on another and 1-3 years each for the nine remaining counts. He served a concurrent term of 10 years in prison for his crimes minus time served. Burning was released on day parole in 2017. At that time, Burning confessed he still thinks of children in a sexual manner, but does not wish to act on those feelings.

In 2017 Ronald Dennis Henry faced 23 sex assault charges with a total of four victims who came forward. Henry claimed to be a “traditional healer” extorted thousands of dollars and manipulated his victims into sex acts, using his sex organs to place “medicine” on their physical bodies. In graphic testimony one of his victims, a teen at the time of the assault, said Henry told her any area of her body that was not given medicine would develop cancer. He was sentenced to three years plus six months of time served in 2019, must be on the sex offenders registry for life and cannot work or hold a position of trust with those under the age of 16 until 2029.

In 2018 a Six Nations man in his fifties was sentenced to ten years in prison for raping and beating his eight year old step daughter and exposing her to pornography. In his psychiatric assessment he told a doctor that it was the girl’s idea to look at pornography and said that she “probably enjoyed” being raped. His name was not released to protect the identity of the victim.

On January 23, 2020 a Wisconsin court found Hayehe:s Matthew Joseph Myke, 35, guilty of Repeated Sexual Assault of Same Child (At Least 3 Violations of 1st or 2nd Degree Sexual Assault). At the time of the assault the victim was 14. Myke was 28. He has been taken into custody and is now facing sentencing in March.The conviction is a Felony C in the state of Wisconsin and carries a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison and a maximum $100,000 fine. Sentencing is set for March 27.

Stories of child sex abuse on reserve are not limited to Six Nations. Here are two recent stories on child sexual assault on other reserves in Canada in the last few years.

In 2016 a 22 year old James Clifford Paul was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the brutal sexual assault and beating of a seven year old girl on the Paul First Nation north of Edmonton, Alberta.
Paul pled guilty to sexual assault and aggravated assault. The child suffered a traumatic brain injury in the 2014 attack just days before Christmas. He confessed to luring the child away from her family, sexually assaulted her and left her naked in the snow. Paul said the child followed him asking not to be left alone and he beat her until she lost consciousness and threw her body into a bush. He was in a coma for days following the attack.

In 2019, a year long investigation of multiple reports of child sexual and physical assault on the Garden Hill First Nation uncovered 17 victims. The children, both boys and girls, were all identified as between the ages of 3 and 15. Three people faced charges in the incident — one of whom was a foster parent involved.
Paul Bruce Harper, then 22, was charged with 17 incidents of sexually abusing boys and girls between 2011-2017. RCMP say he was in contact with over 150 children who were all assessed medically and interviewed.
A second suspect, a 20 year old, faces sexual assault and sexual interference charges. He is not being named as the charges fall under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Foster mother, Lucy Harper, 66, has been charged with perjury, as well as failure to report a child in need of protection and failure to provide for a child in need of protection. She was released on a recognizance with conditions and is no longer a foster parent.