‘IT FELT VERY UNSAFE’
Woman accuses former music teacher of inappropriate relationship
Woman accuses former music teacher of inappropriate relationship
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
A woman testified in court Friday that her former Charlottetown music teacher regularly kissed her on the mouth and “directed’’ her to touch his penis or watch him masturbate on several occasions.
Roger James Jabbour is on trial on two counts of sexual exploitation.
The woman, now 44, told the court while she was a band student at Colonel Gray high school in the early 1990s, Jabbour would frequently have inappropriate contact with her in his office.
She said he began by first caressing her back and hair but eventually progressed to kissing her on the cheeks and then on her lips.
“I do remember his tongue in my mouth,’’ she said.
The woman said Jabbour also masturbated in front of her and even put his hand on her hand to “teach me how it’s done’’. She recalls Jabbour ejaculating on at least one occasion.
She told the court she was too intimidated by Jabbour to tell anyone about what he was doing.
She noted he had an explosive temper that saw him throwing chairs and demeaning students when he felt they did not measure up.
The woman said Jabbour would take her in his office and lock the door before making his advances.
“I felt very unsafe,’’ she testified.
“It was an awkward situation… I feel he took away my youth and innocence.’’
She never felt she was in a position to reject Jabbour’s inappropriate actions because he was in a position of authority and she was a student – his music student.
“I feared retribution,’’ she told the court.
“I just had a sense I needed to endure this.’’
The complainant said Jabbour gestured her to remain quiet one time in his locked office when his wife knocked on the door. The incident, she testified, seemed to make Jabbour giddy over the thrill of not getting caught.
She said Jabbour also would have inappropriate contact with her in his car.
The complainant said Jabbour turned to her as his confidante, telling her how he was unattracted to his wife, who was
in the courtroom Friday.
She would be in Jabbour’s office on average four times a week, she told the court, “for conversation or more.’’
The woman testified that she told Jabbour on or near her graduation day in 1992 that she never wanted to see him again or to hear from him.
“I remember feeling like I had just gotten out of jail,’’ she said.
Jabbour’s lawyer Joel Pink, however, produced several letters that the woman wrote to Jabbour in the months after her 1992 graduation, including one dated Sept. 14, 1995.
She was told to read out the letters, which were all friendly in nature, in court.
In one letter, she wrote that she had been thinking about Jabbour a lot and offered to “take you away to a nice restaurant.’’
She was reminded that she had told a detective who investigated her allegations of sexual exploitation at the hands of Jabbour that she spent the years following her graduation wondering if she would punch Jabbour if she ever came across him again.
“I don’t recall having continued contact with him,’’ she testified.
“I don’t recall writing these letters.’’
However, she acknowledged the letters were clearly written by her.
The trial resumes Monday, when Chief Provincial Court Judge Nancy Orr is expected to rule on the admissibility of whether some evidence from Jabbour’s recent previous trial can be entered in this trial.
Jabbour was found guilty in September of three sex offences involving former students. Pink is expected to argue in court on Nov. 2 that the mandatory minimum sentence of one year in jail Jabbour is facing is unconstitutional.