Anti-vaccine teacher found guilty of misconduct
TORONTO — An Ontario science teacher stormed out of a hearing after being found guilty of professional misconduct for telling students vaccines could kill them.
An independent disciplinary committee with the Ontario College of Teachers found Timothy C. Sullivan guilty Wednesday of five acts, including abusing students psychologically or emotionally.
The college accused Sullivan of professional misconduct for his actions on March 9, 2015, when he shouted at a public health nurse administering vaccines at his high school and accused nurses of withholding information from students receiving vaccinations.
The college is seeking penalties that include a reprimand, a suspension for one month and completing an anger management course. When the lawyer for the college submitted a previous case on which to base the penalty, Sullivan looked at the document, stood up and walked out.
He came back in wearing his coat and asked if he had to be there, before making reference to the other case, which contained the words “abused” and “sexually.”
“You already have some ideas what you’re going to do, don’t you?” he told the committee as he left.
Sullivan, a teacher at a high school in Waterford, Ont., who represented himself in the two-day hearing, said outside court he was upset because he felt his actions were being compared to the other case.
When asked if he would return to teaching, he said: “We’ll see if they let me.”
The college’s lawyer, Christine Wadsworth, told the hearing after Sullivan left that the other case had nothing to do with sexual abuse. Rather, it was about a teacher who coached his school’s hockey team and used profane language with the league’s convener.
However, she said, the words “abused” and “sexually” were included in the document provided to Sullivan.
The disciplinary committee, which required a few recesses after the outburst to figure out its next steps, is going to deliberate on Sullivan’s sentence.
Sullivan denied many of the allegations, but admitted to leaving class once to speak with nurses and to telling one student that a side effect of one of the vaccines could be death.
He maintained that the students weren’t given proper information to consent to be vaccinated, including information about potentially serious, but rare, side effects of the shots.
He was suspended for one day without pay in April 2015 for his actions the previous month.
On Tuesday, Angela Swick, a nurse with the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit, told the hearing she felt threatened and intimidated by Sullivan’s three visits to the cafeteria, where she and her colleagues were giving vaccines to students.
Swick told the committee Sullivan shouted at her and her colleagues.