Chronic sex offender arrested after girl allegedly groped on bus

A Richmond man with a long history of sexual offences is facing sexual assault charges after a young girl was allegedly groped while riding a Coast Mountain bus.

According to Richmond RCMP, shortly before 5:50 p.m. on May 15, officers responded to a report of a sexual assault in the 5000-block of Granville Avenue.

The suspect was reported to be a man in a white shirt, who was also wearing a tie, dark pants and a blue hat.

Two Good Samaritans followed the man off the bus and the bus driver helped the girl, who was shaken but physically unharmed, until the police arrived.

Police arrested a man ten minutes later without incident.

Leonardo B. French, 74, has been charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of sexual touching of a person under sixteen years of age.

French, who also has used the aliases Leonardo Da Vancouver and Victor Leonard Boudreau, is well-known to police and is known to travel often on public transit. The Mounties believe there may be other victims and are hoping to speak with them.

French’s record stretches back to 1986, when he was first convicted of sexual assault in Ontario.

In 2003, he was placed on probation after groping a 12-year-old girl on a Vancouver bus while also touching himself. He was also charged in October 2003 for assaulting a woman on a Vancouver bus, but those charges were dropped.

In September 2004, he served four days in jail after he rubbed against a woman at the River Rock Casino. He was also banned from the casino. A year later, he was charged with three counts of criminal harassment after he was driving a minivan and followed three teen girls.

In May 2006, he was given a 30-day conditional sentence for a sexual assault against a woman on the 98 B-Line bus from Richmond to Vancouver. At the time of that assault, he was under bail conditions imposed after a similar incident in 2004 — he would plead guilt to common assault on that charge — and had been forbidden from riding any bus or SkyTrain in B.C.

French also at one time ran an online plush toy company called pinch babies which were directed at young children.