Glen Massick (L) and Chris Beaton (R) were both sentenced this year for egregious sex crimes against vulnerable victims under their care (NanaimoNewsNOW/BC Housing)

By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

serious offences

Top Stories of 2022: Sex offenders sentenced for multiple breaches of trust

Dec 19, 2022 | 1:46 PM

NANAIMO — Crimes by adults against minors often result in life-long damaging consequences for victims, particularly when an adult is in a direct position of trust.

A pair of highly disturbing cases before the courts in Nanaimo this year detailed behaviour by once highly respected community members.

Glen Massick
In Late September, Glen Murray Massick received a six-year prison sentence for sex crimes against two underage boys and a young man. All three victims were developmentally delayed.

Two of the victims were students in a class with Massick, who was employed as an educational assistant at John Barsby Secondary School.

The students were 14 and 15-years-old when Massick took the boys on fishing trips at Colliery Dam outside school hours, an agreed statement of facts heard.

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During interviews with police, both victims reported Massick sexually touched them and showed them pornography in his van at the park.

Inappropriate text messages were also sent to the boys by the offender. The crimes took place between May 1 and June 10, 2021.

In an earlier incident occurring sometime between 2018 and 2019, Massick sexually assaulted an 18-year-old male during a single incident when Massick was in a position of trust.

The sentencing hearing was unusual as Massick was asked to re-enter the guilty pleas he made months earlier based on his conduct during the pre-sentence repoort.

In the pre-sentence report and psychiatric assessment, Massick displayed a lack of insight into his offending.

Massick claimed he wasn’t attracted to pre-pubescent boys or girls. He was determined to be a high-risk to re-offend.

One of Massick’s victims reported he was suicidal after being abused by somebody he previously looked up to.

The father of one of the victims wanted Massick to spend more time in jail.

“It wasn’t enough, he took innocence of three boys, that’s not enough, but it’s better than nothing,” a father said.

Chris Beaton
Shock waves reverberated around the community when child-luring charges were first applied against Chris Beaton in the summer of 2021.

He entered a guilty plea in mid-February to a pair of charges of telecommunicating to lure children under 18-years-old and was sentenced in July.

Beaton was the former once highly respected executive director of the Nanaimo Aboriginal Centre (NAC) which rebranded to Island Urban Indigenous Wellness Society after Beaton was sentenced. He abruptly left his position months before the charges were made public.

Beaton was handed a suspended sentence, two years probation and falls under numerous restrictive conditions for sex offenders for five years.

Court was told Beaton propositioned two NAC clients, both boys aged 16 and 17 at the time, for sexual favours in return for rewards if they engaged in sex acts with him.

“Interspersed with the sexualized conversations, offers of various things such as employment, or gifts all framed within the NAC…it’s a bit difficult I think to parse out which parts of those were legitimate offers,” Crown prosecutor Nick Barber told the July 18 sentencing hearing.

The messages shook the victim’s faith in Beaton, the NAC and also negatively impacted their schooling, Barber told court.

Readers were left dumbfounded by Beaton’s post-offence conduct, which included comments to the author of his forensic report: ” I had my fun and it caused me a lot of problems,” Beaton said.

Just prior to Beaton apologizing for his actions in court, judge Sheila Archer stated she hoped further counselling would help determine what caused his offending.

“There must be some underlying reason why someone in your position doing so well would have perpetrated what had been aptly described as self-destructive behaviours,” judge Archer said.

In November, a self-represented Beaton ditched an application to have a court-ordered restriction eased, which aimed to grant him access to a Nanaimo daycare to assist family members.

In addition to Crown Counsel’s opposition, the operator of the daycare was also against the application.

“Without Crown’s support I think I’m really wasting the court’s time and I don’t want to do that,” Beaton said, who told court his application was a suggestion from his probation officer.

Both Massick and Beaton will appear on the National Sex Offender registry for life, which is a database only accessible by police departments nation-wide to track the current location of convicted sex offenders.

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