Details emerge of past charges against accused in child abduction

The 2009 sexual exploitation LONDON complaint against a man — now charged in the Mother’s Day abduction of a little girl — involved two young sisters who attended a London school where he worked as a janitor, Postmedia News has learned.

Lawrence Allen Thompson, 65, was charged last week with multiple offences, including kidnapping and sexually assaulting a minor, after a four-year-old girl was snatched while playing outside in an east-end neighbourhood. The startling, rare stranger abduction was not Thompson’s first brush with the law, according to court documents.

In August 2008, he was charged with two counts each of sexual assault and sexual interference with a person younger than 14 stemming from alleged incidents between Jan. 1, 2007 and July 28, 2008, the documents show.

All four charges eventually were withdrawn when Thompson agreed to a peace bond, a court-engineered deal where an accused agrees not to communicate with complainants. The two complainants in that matter were sisters, ages nine and 12, and pupils at a London elementary school where Thompson worked as a custodian, the girls’ mother said in a recent interview. The names of the woman and her daughters were confirmed by court documents obtained Tuesday. The family also was neighbours with Thompson and his wife, the mother said.

“The girls went over (to his house) now and then. His wife would do crafts with them and things like that,” the mother said.

“I feel like I’m the stupidest person now. They were both so nice.” Under the terms of the peace bond, Thompson was barred from communicating directly or indirectly with four women — including the two sisters and their mother — for a year starting Sept. 11, 2009. Thompson also was told to stay at least 200 metres away from the workplaces, homes or schools of each of the four women for 12 months. Thompson paid a $500 surety as part of the agreement and has no criminal record. Neither the withdrawn charges from 2008, nor the 2018 charges against Thompson, have been proven in court.

The decision to pursue a peace bond with Thompson wasn’t an easy one, the complainants’ mother said. “The prosecutor said my girls testifying could have been very traumatic for them, and it would be their word against his,” she said.