Former students of retired Chatham violin teacher Claude Trachy, still stunned a trial judge believed his evidence that he measured their breasts so they’d be better musicians, are hopeful the Court of Appeal will overturn his acquittal on several sexual offences.On Tuesday, the province’s highest court heard arguments in a Crown appeal of Trachy’s acquittal last year following a two-week trial in Chatham where 21 women testified about his actions during their violin and viola lessons decades ago.The court reserved its decision following Tuesday’s hearing and will return with a ruling at a later date.Several of the complainants were at Osgoode Hall to hear the arguments — as was Trachy, now 73, and his wife. “It was shocking, mortifying, it felt as though the defendant and his explanation and motivation were all that mattered and the impact on the lives of 20 something women was disregarded,” said one of the complainants of Superior Court Justice Thomas Carey’s 2018 decision. She began taking lessons from Trachy when she was 16.The woman, whose identity women is subject publication ban, said she’s concerned if the ruling stands, it essentially says that “teachers are allowed to remove a young woman’s clothing and touch her breasts without consent and saying that’s OK because it’s for a teaching purpose.” During arguments Tuesday, Crown attorney John Patton recalled some of the evidence the trial judge heard during the trial, including the testimony of one complainant, “who recalled him using his thumb or forefinger to rub the end of her nipple” and telling her he wanted to see “where the end is of you.”Another complainant had “strikingly similar” evidence, in which she described him pulling her nipple and using a ruler to measure her breast. Defence lawyer Matthew Gourlay, when it was his turn to speak, told Justices David Doherty, Mary Lou Ben ...
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