Teacher faces sex assault charge, disciplinary hearing

A former St. Catharines high school teacher charged with sexual assault is also facing a professional disciplinary hearing over allegations he had sexual relationships with two of his female students, The Standard has learned.

Sixty-five-year-old Hans Edouard Unruh, a teacher at Holy Cross Secondary School in St. Catharines until 2014, was arrested by Niagara Regional Police Wednesday.

He is charged with sexual assault and sexual exploitation. Unruh is in police custody pending a bail hearing.

Police said they began their investigation into a “historic sexual assault” in July 2016. In a Thursday news release, the NRP said a teacher at Holy Cross allegedly sexually assaulted a 17-year-old female student between January 2011 and January 2012. Const. Phil Gavin said police investigated incidents that happened on and off school property.

The criminal charges against Unruh follows a Niagara Catholic District School Board investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct at the school.

Rick Mauro, CAA’s vice-president of marketing and public relations, said they received a little more than 1,000 votes in Niagara and more than 16,000 votes across Ontario.

Eighty-nine per cent of Niagara voters said they picked a worst road because of potholes and crumbling pavement.

Mauro said although CAA gave voters an opportunity to pin point certain sections of roads, when it came to Drummond Road and Queenston Street, for example, voters gave a “wholesale negative vote.”

“Voters … don’t tend to get into specifics,” he said.

“We try to because we think that’s better for the dialogue with municipalities to be able to pinpoint, but … we’ve already let those municipalities know that they’ve got roads (on the list) and I would say that their engineering departments could definitely tell you what sections (are worse than others).”

This year’s campaign allowed voters to identify themselves as cyclicts and pedestrians and there were increasing references to poor conditions for cycling, walking or crossing a road.

“We believe it’s important to give Niagara residents a chance to have their voice heard and that’s what this campaign does,” said Mauro.

“The CAA campaign is an excellent way to draw the attention of the local municipalities and encourage infrastructure improvements.”

Queenston Street is seeing watermain replacement, sanitary and storm sewer separation, street-light upgrades, traffic signal improvements and landscaping as part of improvement efforts scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

The Ontario Road Builders’ Association verifies and assesses CAA’s top worst roads.

The association said there’s a full reconstruction contract underway for some of Queenston Street.

There is, however, another section of the road that is also in need of repairs.

The association said often times it finds municipalities are forced to pick and choose what roads they invest in and push the rest off into future years.

CAA said it will present the 2017 worst roads results to local and provincial government officials.

It said it will also continue its call for a dedicated, predictable and permanent gasoline tax fund for Ontario’s roads, highways and bridges.