New court date for accused in sex sting

A retired Catholic school teacher was among the four men scheduled for court appearances on Wednesday to face charges resulting from a Vancouver police sting targeting dozens of men allegedly arranging to have sex with teenage girls.

Nikolaos Dais, 58, a teacher up until last year at Little Flower Academy, and three others — Jun Jie He, 57, James Malmros, 28, and Mario Celo Amistad — had their cases put over on Wednesday for appearances in February.

None of the four men appeared in person, and instead each had a legal representative appear before a Vancouver provincial court judge on his behalf. Defence lawyers requested deferrals to give them more time to go over the Crown’s case against the men.

The four were among the first seven charged in the sting last year that resulted in 47 arrests on the charge of obtaining for consideration the sexual services of a person under 18. The fifth accused, Donald Schroeder, has a court appearance scheduled for Thursday. A date was set for another of the accused, Mehran Arefi, earlier this week.

The seventh, former Vision Vancouver school trustee for the Vancouver board Ken Clement, pleaded not guilty Dec. 7. He has a trial date set for three days, beginning Oct. 29.

Another 40 men were arrested and are expected to face the same charge, according to B.C. prosecutors.