Ed Horne, a notorious sexual abuser of Inuit boys in the 1970s and 1980s, is dead, reports from Guatemala say. (Photo courtesy of the Northwest Territories Archives)
‘Arctic predator’ Ed Horne dead in Guatemala: News report
Convicted child sex predator abused Inuit boys in the 1970s and ’80s
Ed Horne, the notorious sexual predator who abused more than 100 Inuit boys in Nunavut and served two jail sentences for his crimes, is dead.
He died in hospital in Guatemala City, Guatemala, according to a news reporter who has been covering Horne’s mysterious arrival at the hospital. Horne was 81.
Horne died at Hospital San Juan de Dios in Guatemala City on Tuesday night from septic shock, ventilator-associated pneumonia, and kidney disease. It’s also believed Horne was suffering from dementia. He had been in hospital since June 30.
Reporter Ashley Monzón with TV Azteca Guate reported that Horne was brought to hospital by paramedics who picked him up near the town of Sanarate. Horne was reportedly on his way to Nicaragua when he fell ill.
Horne was born in Bella Bella, B.C. He started teaching schoolchildren in B.C. in 1965. He taught at Quesnel; Mile 392 on the Alaska Highway; Lower Post Indian Residential School at Lower Post, B.C.; then worked as a librarian at Silverthorne Elementary School in
Houston, B.C., before moving to the Eastern Arctic in 1971.
Horne began his Eastern Arctic teaching career in Sanikiluaq. After his first year, he resigned his position and worked at the Sanikiluaq Co-op.
The next year, Horne worked for the Co-op in Resolute Bay for four months. He applied to return to Sanikiluaq but was rejected on the advice of the local advisory board, so from 1974 to 1975 he taught school in Great Whale River (now Kuujjuaraapik).
By 1975, Horne was able to return to Sanikiluaq as a teacher, where he stayed until 1977.
Horne’s teenage classroom assistant Alec Inuktaluk disappeared in the spring of 1977. The boy’s body was never found, and the mystery surrounding his disappearance often involved Horne who some people believed killed the boy because he was going to report
Horne’s predations to the authorities.
Horne always denied the rumours.
A month after Alec Inuktaluk vanished, Horne married Jeannie Cookie from Great Whale River. She died in Montreal in March 2024 at the age of 78.
The Hornes moved to Cape Dorset (now Kinngait) in 1978, where they would live for two years.
Their only biological son, John Paul Akavak Horne, was born in 1979.
In 1980, Horne transferred to Grise Fiord for one year.
Then, in 1981 he moved to Iqaluit to work on curriculum development. The next year, he moved back to Cape Dorset where he and his wife adopted James Joseph Atsainaq Horne Jr. in 1982.
The Hornes adopted their third child, Daniel Pitsiulaaq Horne, and move to Lake Harbour (now Kimmirut) in 1983.
In the fall of 1985, Horne moved to Apex to be principal of Nanook School.
He was arrested for child abuse at his home there in October 1985 after social workers and RCMP worked together to uncover his predations in Cape Dorset and Lake Harbour.
In February 1987, after entering a guilty plea, Horne was sentenced to six years for 11 charges involving eight boys he sexually abused between 1983 and 1985 in Cape Dorset and Lake Harbour. Horne was paroled in 1990. He moved to Mexico in 1995, where he worked as a teacher of adults.
There were many more victims who eventually spoke to police, launching a new investigation. In March 1999, Horne was arrested at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport while returning from Mexico.
Ed Horne, a notorious sexual abuser of Inuit boys, is seen in 2022 working as a bicycle courier in Toronto. Horne died Tuesday in Guatemala, news reports in the Central American country say. (Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lippa)
He was charged with 66 counts of sexual offences between 1970 and 1985, against 44 male complainants in Sanikiluaq, Cape Dorset, Grise Fiord, Lake Harbour and Iqaluit.
Horne pleaded guilty again, and signed an agreed statement of facts just like in the first case, where what he agreed what happened was less severe than what boy victims reported to police and social workers.
He received a second jail sentence of five years after pleading guilty to abusing 23 boys.
By 2005, Horne was back in Canada facing more charges stemming from his time as a teacher in the North. In that case, he would plead not guilty. He was acquitted in 2008, and moved to Nicaragua where he lived until 2016.
Two civil lawsuits against the governments of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut resulted in huge settlements for more than 100 male victims and one female victim.
It is unclear why Horne moved to Toronto, where he was working in 2022 as a bicycle courier.
He may have moved to Guatemala this year.
Kathleen Lippa is the author of Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada’s North, published by Dundurn Press earlier this year.