Voyeur-teacher’s victims speak out: ‘It haunts me’

FILMED STAFF, PUPIL

hard drives and his cellphone captured their naked buttocks and genitalia. Some were made as far back as 2011.

But as the case has slowly made its way through the court system, the victims have struggled.

“The case before you is like an iceberg,” one woman told Superior Court Justice Marc Garson. “There’s so much more under the surface.”

The woman, who said she wasn’t identified as a victim in the case because she had no distinctive markings on her body that would conclusively point to her being filmed, said the provincial ministry of labour didn’t investigate the school, and the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, which handles workers’ compensation cases, wouldn’t accept their claims because the case was before the courts.

“The system has failed,” she said tearfully, adding she has been left shattered by Gardiner’s “vexatious behaviour.”

In the 12 victim-impact statements filed to the court, many talked about their ongoing anxieties, stress, fears in public washrooms and change rooms and how they have changed jobs.

One woman, whose statement was read by assistant Crown attorney James Spangenberg, spoke of her stress becoming so intense that some of her hair has fallen out. They are all terrified that somehow the images have ended up on the internet. At the previous court hearing, Garson was told there is no evidence the videos were shared.

The woman who found the camera told the court that she feels “completely sexually violated. “He filmed me before, during and after my pregnancies. … He witnessed Jamie Gardiner my body go through more changes than I would even allow my husband to see.”

She told Garson that concerns her naked image is on the internet “means that my feelings of vulnerability won’t end at the conclusion of this case.”

One woman, who had her victim-impact statement read by a victim-witness case worker, said Gardiner filmed her when she was pregnant: “You took the joy of that time from me. What a horrible thing to have to go through at such a time.

“Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the horrible, disgusting violation you chose to make on me and so many others.”

She said she has experienced panic attacks in the classroom and had flashbacks. “Realizing that you had seen me without my clothes on, and without my permission, haunts me,” she wrote.

Gardiner’s crimes have affected her relationship with her child, who she said “deserves a happy mom, and instead has a mother who is in pain, going to counselling, and fighting the need for drugs to balance emotions.”

Another woman told the court that she is having trouble coming to terms with the enormous breach of trust by a co-worker.

“You used my body without permission. … You had this intimate knowledge of me and I had no idea. When I think of the magnitude of lies and deception you held for so long, it makes me want to vomit,” she said.

Gardiner returns to court on Oct. 16.