Association bans teacher for life

A former teacher convicted of sexual offences with young boys should be banned from the profession for life, a conduct committee ruled Wednesday.

A three-member Alberta Teachers’ Association conduct committee permanently revoked association membership from Jamey Brian Kristian, a 40-year-old exteacher who taught at Raymond Elementary School in southern Alberta.

“The conduct that constituted the criminal convictions ... is egregious,” teachers’ association presenting officer Keith Hadden told the committee.

Kristian was teaching at the Westwind School Division in January 2014 when Lethbridge Regional Police charged him with seven sexual offences. A nine-year-old boy had been sexually assaulted in the summer of 2013 and another boy between 2008 and 2012.

The school division put Kristian on unpaid administrative leave. It’s unclear whether any of the victims were Kristian’s students.

Police found 2,000 pictures and 150 videos of child pornography on Kristian’s computer. Police said the photographs allowed them to identify a third victim who was assaulted in 2012 when he was 10. Police laid 19 more charges in June 2014.

In August 2015, Kristian resigned from his job at the school and, the next month, pleaded guilty to sexual assault, voyeurism, possession and production of child pornography, invitation to sexual touching and sexual interference.

He admitted to making 70 videos of boys in the change rooms of two Lethbridge swimming pools without their knowledge.

One of Kristian’s victims tearfully told a judge he had isolated himself since the assault, lives in fear and cuts himself to deal with depression and anxiety, the Lethbridge Herald reported.

Kristian issued a statement apologizing for the harm he’d caused.

In July 2016, a judge sentenced Kristian to 12 years in prison, imposed a lifetime firearms ban and ordered his name be added to a registry of sex offenders.

Teachers convicted of a more serious indictable offence in criminal court are automatically guilty of unprofessional conduct, Hadden said. Kristian’s transgressions are at the “extreme end of the range of misconduct,” he said, and showed evidence of planning and a longterm pattern of behaviour.

The public must have confidence that the profession deals decisively with such deplorable actions, he said. He recommended the discipline committee impose the most serious penalty — expulsion from the association and recommend the minister of education revoke Kristian’s teaching certificate.

Kristian did not have a representative

The conduct that constituted the criminal convictions ... is egregious.

at Wednesday’s hearing.

Committee members Sheila Fraser, Wayne Prokopiw and public member George Epp accepted Hadden’s recommendation, also opting to ask the education minister to make Kristian permanently ineligible from holding a teaching certificate in Alberta.

Also on Wednesday, RCMP announced officers had in February laid two charges of sexual exploitation against another teacher from Raymond. Jentry Jack Salmon, 33, has been under investigation since October, when police heard the teacher was allegedly exchanging inappropriate texts and meeting a high school student outside of school. The Westwind School Division said on its website it suspended Jentry in October.

Raymond is about 40 kilometres southeast of Lethbridge.