The case of a former Saskatoon high school teacher accused of arranging to commit a sexual offence against a child is proceeding to trial at Court of Queen’s Bench.
Rhett Jeffrey Lundgren’s preliminary hearing, scheduled for this month in Saskatoon provincial court, will not go ahead after the Crown filed a direct indictment last week.
Direct indictments allow cases to bypass the preliminary hearing — held to determine if there is enough evidence to go to trial — and proceed straight to the trial stage. They are preferred under specific circumstances when the attorney general or deputy attorney general deems it necessary to expedite a case.
“In this case, a preliminary hearing would not resolve any issues; all issues are triable issues best left for the trier of fact,” Crown prosecutor Lana Morelli said.
Lundgren, who used to teach at Walter Murray Collegiate, is charged with two counts of arranging to commit a sexual offence against a child, possession of child porn and attempting to access child porn. He was released on $2,000 bail in January after allegedly breaching his initial release conditions by not living at an approved residence and by being alone with a child under the age of 16.
No trial dates have been set at this time.
A preliminary hearing for Lundgren will take place in January 2018 in Red Deer, where he faces separate allegations of sexual exploitation and child luring stemming from his time as a teacher in 2009.
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