5 women come forward as police probe York U. assaults

Toronto police say they have now heard from a total of five women since launching an investigation into a series of recent sexual assaults at York University.

Police initially said they were investigating three reported sexual assaults that occurred outside Vari Hall on the university campus last Thursday.

They announced an arrest of a male suspect on Monday evening.

CBC News has learned that surveillance video helped police make the arrest of the suspect, who is not a student at the university.

Oshane Leach, 20, of Toronto has been charged with three counts of sexual assault, two counts of assault and two counts of criminal harassment.

Leach made a brief court appearance on Tuesday. He was ordered held in custody until Wednesday when he will have a bail hearing.

Police say that the charges Leach is facing pertain to five separate incidents, four of which occurred on the York campus.

The accused could face further charges if more victims come forward, police say.

While York University says it took steps to alert the community about the reported assaults while the investigation was ongoing, some students question if the school could have done more.

"Hearing about the different sexual-harassment situations was a little shocking, because there’s so many of them," said Danielle Brown, a student who spoke to CBC News.

A security bulletin was posted around the campus on Friday, but a mass email did not go out to students until Monday, the CBC’s Genevieve Tomney reported.

The school’s student federation hopes the administration has learned something from this case.

"If something’s happened and it’s not being told to students, students are not aware of what’s going on on the campus and that can be a safety issue," said Safiyah Hussein of the York Federation of Students.

York has dealt with security issues on its campus in the past, including when two women were sexually assaulted in their dorms in 2007 and when a string of sexual assaults occurred in 2010.

In January, a suspected peeping Tom was spotted hiding in women’s washrooms on campus and in February, police arrested a man who they allege fired a shotgun blast through an apartment door that is located on the York campus.