Ottawa teacher pleads guilty to sexual assault of former student
Parents say ordeal left son with lasting emotional scars, struggles every day
An elementary school teacher who had sexual encounters with a former student in parking lots, sent him sexual pictures on social media, and told the boy she wanted to leave her husband for him has pleaded guilty in court.
Kyla Cowan-Wilson pleaded guilty Friday to a single count of sexual assault. As a result, charges of invitation to sexual touching and sexual interference laid against the former teacher in July 2016 were withdrawn.
The years-long ordeal has left the teen, now 19, broken, suicidal and struggling to make sense of sexual abuse he once thought of as a relationship, his family told the court.
Cowan-Wilson, who became a teacher in 2009, met the boy in 2011 when he was 12 and she was his 27-year-old basketball coach at a school in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
The following year, when the boy was in Grade 8, Cowan-Wilson became his primary teacher and sent the child a letter detailing how she knew he had to be in her class. Soon, the disgraced teacher asked the boy’s mother whether she could give him rides home from basketball practice and help him deal with symptoms of depression.
The two began having lengthy text message conversations, court heard. On a school camping trip, they went to find some firewood and the teacher cried at the thought of the boy going to a new school for ninth grade. The next school year, Cowan-Wilson continued to try to be close to the child, asking his mother if he could come back to volunteer with the basketball team.
They continued to spend time together, with Cowan-Wilson eventually asking the boy if he had feelings for her. The woman, who had survived thyroid cancer, confided in him that she was unhappy in her marriage.
Court heard the two began sending each other sexual images on Snapchat where pictures are timed and automatically deleted after being viewed. CowanWilson sent the boy pictures of herself in a bra and thong but not her genitals, telling him instead that she wanted them to wait until they had sex to see each other fully nude.
The two never had sex. Instead, the married teacher would pick up the student and park in a Costco parking lot where she would straddle, kiss and fondle him. Cowan-Wilson would buy the boy alcohol and tell him she loved him.
The boy’s sister discovered a “love letter” birthday card the teacher had given him when he turned 15. She took it to their mother. The card was completely covered in Cowan-Wilson’s writing.
The boy’s mother went to the school board with her concerns, prompting Cowan-Wilson to go on sick leave. Despite continuing to ask her son what was happening between him and Cowan-Wilson, he didn’t want to tell her.
In October 2015, the boy finally told a friend what was happening and that friend encouraged him to tell his parents and police. The boy trusted that friend enough to deliver the boy’s victim impact statement on Friday.
“The scars you have carved into him will be there forever,” the friend said.
The boy’s mother told the court that she was “panicked and shocked” when she discovered what was happening. “I was unravelling as a mother.”
Parents are protectors of their children, she said. “I had missed something. I didn’t protect him and I have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
She tried for an entire year to get her son to admit something was wrong.
“He was trying to get the voice out of his head. Her voice that told him to be silent.”
Cowan-Wilson’s “selfish and perverse” actions had made her son full of anger, pain, guilt and shame, and put her family through sleepless nights and hours of counselling.
“I also learned how to talk to a closed door; a one-way conversation through a door to my aching son.”
The teen’s father told the court that his son had “always dreamt big and set his goals high” but now he struggles every day. “He has demons in his head.”
The teen’s father has to watch as his son shakes with anger when they pass by the parking lots Cowan-Wilson took him to, and was afraid to look at every late-night text wondering if it would bring news of his son’s suicide.
He told the court he’s proud of his son who “fought the fight” to have his day in court.
He turned to his son, who sat staring into his lap during much of the day’s proceedings and said: “A life lived in fear is a life halflived. Fear not, my son.”
The teen’s sisters told the court that Cowan-Wilson manipulated him and is a danger to society, and that no sentence can bring justice for what she’s done to their family.
A sentencing date has yet to be set.
I was unravelling as a mother ... I had missed something. I didn’t protect him and I have to live with that for the rest of my life.