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	Bungling Alleged in Case of Pedophile Twice-Convicted Man Allowed to Bring Boy from India without Prior Background Check By Matt McClure Toronto Star June 9, 2007 http://www.thestar.com/News/article/223496 New Delhi–Federal authorities allowed a twice-convicted pedophile to bring a young boy from India to Canada, where he now says he was subjected to repeated sexual abuse. It appears immigration officials with Canada's mission in New Delhi gave the 15-year-old a visa without checking the criminal background of Ernest Fenwick MacIntosh, who was sponsoring his visit. Court documents show that when MacIntosh went with the boy to apply for the visa in 1990, the bachelor was a known sex offender in Canada because of a 1984 conviction for sexual assault of a young boy in Nova Scotia. The file also mentions an earlier sex-related offence. An official with the immigration department said officials don't check the criminal background of a citizen or resident who agrees to host a visiting child before they issue a visa. "If we have a signed consent from a parent," said Karen Shadd-Evelyn, "we assume they know and approve of the person to whom they're entrusting their child." Shadd-Evelyn refused to discuss this specific case, citing privacy reasons, but the boy, now 31 years old and living in India, says his parents never signed the visa application. During the interview with an immigration officer in New Delhi, the alleged victim said MacIntosh purported to be his guardian. Later, he said, he and MacIntosh were invited for lunch at the officer's home in the diplomatic compound. "He and the immigration officer seemed to know each other well," he said. "She thought he was some nice old guy helping out poor kids." Passport stamps indicate the boy flew to Canada in February 1991, where he lived at MacIntosh's home in Montreal's tony Westmount neighbourhood. During his three-month stay, the alleged victim said, MacIntosh ordered him to cook and do chores while he was away working at a Montreal electronics company. On evenings and weekends, he said, he was repeatedly fondled and forced to engage in oral sex. MacIntosh helped him get another visa to Canada in 1992, and during a subsequent visit, he said, he was sexually abused again. "I remember many times in Montreal when I was crying and begging him to stop," he said. "I didn't know anyone in Canada. I felt helpless." The alleged victim said he contacted the RCMP liaison officer with Canada's diplomatic mission in New Delhi this week to enquire about filing a criminal complaint with authorities in Canada. He said he first met MacIntosh in the mid-1980s while he was studying at Gandhi Ashram, a school in northeast India run by a Canadian priest. On other occasions, he said, MacIntosh obtained visas for two other former students so they could visit Canada. "I feel the Canadian government has to answer," he said yesterday. "Why didn't they check this man's background before allowing him to take us?" The man's questions add to the growing list of bungles by Canadian bureaucrats that gave MacIntosh free rein to allegedly prey on unsuspecting or vulnerable boys for the better part of two decades. MacIntosh moved to India permanently in 1994 where he began working as a sales manager for major electronics companies. Police in Nova Scotia charged MacIntosh with sexual abuse again in 1995 in connection with alleged assaults in the 1970s, but a decade would pass before Canadian authorities asked India to send him back to face trial. Officials with the justice department and Nova Scotia's prosecution service blame one another for letting the file languish. MacIntosh was finally extradited back to Canada this week and appeared yesterday in a Nova Scotia courtroom, where a judge ordered him remanded in custody until a bail hearing next Wednesday. MacIntosh might have been forced to return sooner, but Canada's passport office renewed his travel document twice in 1997 and 2002, allowing MacIntosh to remain in India and travel frequently for business and pleasure. During his stay in India, MacIntosh befriended dozens of young boys. As revealed in last week's Sunday Star, he was banished from a school in northeast India in 1999, after a 13-year-old student alleged MacIntosh fondled him during an overnight stay at an area hotel. A pre-sentence report from MacIntosh's 1984 conviction shows there was worry then that he would continue to be a risk to society.
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