A former Sechelt and Vancouver RCMP officer entered pleas of not guilty in BC Supreme Court on Monday (March 28) to charges of gross indecency and sexual assault.
This is the first of three trials for Gary Rudi Groenke, who has been charged with sexually assaulting three boys as young as 12 from 1983 to 1991 while he worked as an RCMP officer in Vancouver and Sechelt.
Last week, B.C. Supreme Court Madam Justice Mary Ellen Boyd ruled on a severance application by defense counsel, deciding that Groenke should face three separate trials for each of his alleged victims.
In the charges read by Crown counsel Marion West on Monday, Groenke, who was also a boy's football coach in Sechelt, is alleged to have supplied alcohol and pornography to the victim, and sexually assaulted him while on two camping trips and also again at Groenke's residence in Sechelt.
A publication ban has been imposed prohibiting the publication of the names of the alleged victims.
The trial continues all week in Vancouver.
Groenke was acquitted in February 2008 in a Victoria courtroom of similar sex offences against minors.
Editor's note: Stay tuned for more updates on this story later this week on-line and in Friday's print edition.
