Pedophile who sexually abused boys across Canada denied parole

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A notorious pedophile who sexually abused more than two dozen young boys while living in various parts of Canada, including Montreal, has been denied parole as he continues to serve an indefinite sentence.

In 2011, John Murray Melanson, 58, was declared a dangerous offender by a judge in the Northwest Territories. With the designation, it is up to the Parole Board of Canada to determine when he can be released.

The sentence put an end to a long series of sex-related crimes that began in the 1980s when Melanson pretended to be a behavioural consultant with university credentials. This provided him with opportunities to be alone with boys. He supplied them with liquor and at one point convinced them to play strip poker.

In September 1987, he was convicted of having assaulted one of the boys and, as part of his probation, he was no longer allowed to do volunteer work where youth would be present. Melanson later admitted that he also sexually assaulted the victim as well as the boy’s brother.

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In 1988, he was convicted of having sexually assaulted a boy over a four-week period. Melanson knew the boy’s father because they worked at the same company. Melanson claimed to be a Boy Scout leader and was allowed to sleep in a tent in the family’s backyard for a month. He served the sentence he received in that case in Saskatchewan.

“Your criminal record shows a break in offending (during the 1990s) at which time you contend you were out of the country (in the United States) working in restaurants and being paid under the table. You claim you were not involved in criminal activity during that time. Your case management team questioned this, given your protracted offending history,” the parole board noted in its recent decision denying Melanson both day and full parole.

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After living in the United States, Melanson moved to Montreal, either in 1999 or 2000, where he began a relationship with a woman. They moved in together with the woman’s six-year-old boy, and Melanson sexually assaulted him 10 times. In April 2000, Melanson took nude photos of the boy and stored them on his computer. He then dropped the boy off at school, took the woman’s car and disappeared.

He was arrested three months later while driving around in the same car. At the Montreal courthouse, he quickly pleaded guilty to several charges, including sexual assault, and was sentenced to a 30-month prison term.

Melanson would later admit to a criminologist conducting a study on pedophiles that when he lived in Montreal he was part of the Ganymede Collective, a group of between 50 and 60 pedophiles who shared information about how to encrypt computer files that contained child pornography.

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It was the earlier version of the group of computer-savvy pedophiles uncovered by the Sûreté du Québec in 2016 through an investigation dubbed Project Malaise. The group was led by pedophile André Faivre, an expert on computer encryption, who was sentenced last year to an overall 12-year prison term after he was convicted of several charges related to child pornography, as well as sexual contact with a minor, gross indecency and counselling a person to have sexual contact with a minor.

After Melanson completed his sentence for abusing the boy in Montreal, he moved on to Winnipeg where, in 2006, he ended up being convicted for possessing child pornography and was sentenced to time served while awaiting the outcome of that case.

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He then moved to the Northwest Territories where he worked in a restaurant in Hay River and befriended a coworker. During the fall of 2006, he babysat the co-worker’s two sons, who were four and five years old at the time. Each time he was alone with the young boys, Melanson was in breach of a probation order from the sentence he received in Winnipeg.

The boys’ behaviour changed after the third time Melanson babysat them, and their father managed to search the pedophile’s computer and found child porn on it. When the father confronted Melanson about the child porn, he bolted and tried to hide in Toronto. He was arrested a month later, in February 2007, and eventually pleaded guilty to having sexually abused his coworker’s sons.

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It was his sentence in that case that resulted in the dangerous offender designation.

“You have been committing sex crimes since your mid-teens, and your preferred targets are young males between the ages of six and 14. You have referenced 20 to 25 victims who have never laid charges against you for the sexual assaults you committed on them,” the parole board stated in its recent decision.

Despite having completed sex offender programs in recent years, Melanson is still considered to have a high risk of reoffending.

“(Correctional Service Canada) again recommends denying both day and full parole. Your case management team indicates that release to the community continues to be premature and would present an undue risk to society,” the author of the summary wrote. “You are still deemed to be in the early stages of implementing your relapse plans. Your reintegration potential remains low. You continue to be assessed as a high risk to reoffend.”

pcherry@postmedia.com