Hindu priest offered to pay off victim to drop rape charges against temple president, ruling says – By Tom Blackwell (National Post) / May 4 2019
Parveen Sharma, president of the Hindu Sabha temple in Brampton, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after being convicted of two counts of sexual assault
The head priest at one of Ontario’s largest Hindu temples offered to pay off a young woman in his congregation if she dropped rape charges against the temple’s president, a court ruling in the unusual case suggests.
Parveen Sharma, president of the Hindu Sabha temple in Brampton, was sentenced this week to two-and-a-half years in prison after being convicted earlier of two counts of sexual assault. Sharma forcibly fondled, then raped a 25-year-old woman who had rented a basement apartment from him and his wife, a Superior Court of Ontario judge ruled.
But the latest case of a Canadian religious leader accused of sexual misconduct also involved an extraordinary attempt to make the allegations disappear, according to the court.
Before the trial, the temple’s top priest met with the woman, suggesting that the temple or Sharma himself could offer her “compensation” if she withdrew the allegations, the victim alleged at trial.
The priest, Abhay Dev Sharma, testified that it was the victim who had asked him for $50,000, and that he didn’t even know about the charges when he met with her.
He wanted to explore whether or not the complainant was open to taking a payment
But Justice Jennifer Woollcombe said in a written decision those statements were “incredible,” and had little doubt about what really happened.
“He is the one who instigated the meeting, clearly prepared to discuss payment to the complainant,” wrote Woollcombe. “It seems to me that the only conclusion to reach from his evidence is that he wanted to explore whether or not the complainant was open to taking a payment to make the charges go away.
One might “reasonably suspect” that Sharma had something to do with the priest’s offer, but there was no evidence to that effect so the incident could not be used against the accused, the judge said.
Dev Sharma, the priest, denied in a brief interview Friday that he had offered any money to the complainant, but said his English proficiency was too poor to discuss the case in detail.
A spokesman for Peel Region Police said Friday that officers have not investigated whether the man’s alleged attempts to silence the witness violated any laws.
Steven Skurka, Parveen Sharma’s lawyer, said his client will be appealing after mounting a “vigorous” defence to the sexual assault charges, and was released on bail Friday pending the appeal.
A spokesman for the temple could not be reached for comment.
According to the ruling — which was issued in February but only came to light this week — the victim in the case rented a basement apartment from Sharma in August 2015, having met him at the Hindu Sabha temple, where he was president. He, his wife and their 26-year-old son lived upstairs.
They developed a friendly relationship, frequently exchanging text messages, but on Oct. 2 he forced himself on her, trying to remove her bra and touching and kissing her breasts, only stopping after she asked two or three times, said Woollcombe’s decision.
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He came twice more to her apartment the next day and sexually assaulted her, the second time forcing her into unprotected intercourse, the judge found. The woman testified she was left “emotionally broken.”
The victim testified that some friends who also attended the Hindu Sabha temple told her they had been approached by others at the institution who asked if she would take money to drop the charges. At a temple with a history of dispute among its leaders, others asked if she would accept money to proceed with the case, the decision said.
Then in mid-2017, she said she met at the friends’ house with Dev Sharma. The priest told her that what had happened to her was wrong but the temple could help her.
“She was told that if she wanted to step back from the case, that she could take the charges back and that they could ask for Mr. Sharma, or the Temple, to compensate her,” wrote the judge about the woman’s testimony.
The priest testified that all he wanted from the meeting “was peace in the temple and that the victim could help him in obtaining that peace,” and that she asked for $50,000.
The judge rejected his testimony.
“He was not forthcoming,” she said about Dev Sharma. “Repeatedly, he had to be asked questions multiple times before he would respond honestly. His explanation for having the meeting (with the victim) defies any logic.”
