The Ontario government is telling parents to stay away from a childcare facility for kids with autism after police issued a rare community warning about how a convicted child sex offender was living at the premises.
An official statement by the province’s solicitor general encouraged “all parents to keep away” from Beating the Odds in Essa Township.
“Allowing him to roam freely around our communities and potentially put more children in danger is a failing of our justice system,” wrote the statement provided to Global News.
“This individual who was convicted of such reprehensible crimes should never be around vulnerable children again.”
On Monday, the Ontario Provincial Police warned that 42-year-old Lauriston Charles Maloney had “regular access” to children. In subsequent media reports, Maloney denied the claim.
“The ‘camp’ is run out of a residence. Maloney lives at the residence,” OPP Sgt. Jason Folz told True North on Tuesday.
“The offender’s spouse runs that camp and is well aware of his background. The OPP investigators from the Nottawasaga Detachment regularly monitor and check in with those on the Ontario Sex Offender Registry.”
The child care centre is owned and operated by his spouse.
“Yes, we share the same property address, but he does not work with these kids. He has his own job that brings him off-site and allows me to operate solely without him,” Amber Maloney said in a statement to CTV News.
Maloney has a total of 16 criminal offences related to trafficking minors for sex work and is registered as a sex offender.
He currently has no conditions which prohibit him from being near children.
Maloney has since claimed that the charges are related to an escort business he worked for in the past.
“I would be picking up women and bringing them to hotels with a company as well as collecting money and sometimes booking hotel rooms for the girls … Those charges were as a result of collecting money for the girls performing sex acts,” claimed Maloney.
