Interior Health’s former top doctor charged with new child sex crimes

Interior Health’s former chief medical health officer has been charged with more child sex crimes out of Grande Prairie, Alta.

Dr. Albert Stefanus de Villiers, who was until June 2021 the health authority’s top doctor, was charged Tuesday with invitation to sexual touching, voyeurism and making sexually explicit material available to a child, relating to events that allegedly took place between January 2017 and December 2019.

Grande Prairie RCMP said in a statement that they launched an investigation into new complaints against De Villiers, 54, in January. At that time he had already been charged with similar crimes alleged to have occurred in an overlapping timeframe.

1:16 Interior Health’s chief medical health officer arrested

De Villiers is already scheduled to appear from Jan. 10 to 23, 2023 in court for a judge-alone trial on charges of sexual assault and sexual interference in Grande Prairie for events that allegedly took place between June 15, 2018, and July 31, 2020.

Information on those charges alleges that de Villiers unlawfully committed a sexual assault on the victim between those dates and the interference charge alleges that de Villiers “did for a sexual purpose, unlawfully touch, directly or indirectly, with a part of the body or with an object, a part of the body (of) a person under the age of 16 years old.”

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De Villiers was the north zone lead medical health officer with Alberta Health Services, based in Grande Prairie, at the time of the alleged offences, according to his LinkedIn page. He spent 16 years in that position, from January 2004 to July 2020, before leaving his post.

He took over as chief medical health officer of Interior Health in August 2020.

Previously he worked out of Grande Prairie as the lead medical health officer with Alberta’s north zone. He originally came to Canada from South Africa.

Following a judicial hearing on the latest round of charges, de Villiers was released on multiple conditions including to not be in the presence of any persons under the age of 16 without supervision.