Ontario teachers who commit abuse allowed to keep licences
The messages came in from her high school teacher, sometimes until 2 a.m.
“I want to see you naked,” one read. “Please don’t leave me.” “If I lose you, I’ll die.” The teacher was Richard S. Buckley, and he taught the girl in Ontario’s Bluewater District School Board, south of Owen Sound. When her vice-principal was tipped off and began to investigate what was going on in the spring of 2014, Buckley contacted the girl in a panic.
He was going to kill himself, he told her, according to an agreed statement of facts in his case. He pleaded with her not to tell administrators what happened between them.
Though Buckley later pleaded guilty to psychological and sexual abuse of his stu- dent in a November 2016 disciplinary hearing at the Ontario College of Teachers, his teaching licence was not revoked.
Ontario law doesn’t require teachers who have committed certain kinds of sexual abuse to lose their licences.
Under new legislation in 2016, if a teacher engages in intercourse, masturbation, child pornography or any of the following contacts — genitalto-genital, genital-to-oral, anal-togenital and oral-to-anal — their licence must be revoked.
But if a teacher gropes a student, touches them in other sexual ways or makes sexual comments toward a student, their licence isn’t automatically revoked.
Those decisions are made case by case at the discretion of the college.
“We should (never have) folks continue teaching when they cross those lines, when they engage in any form of sexual violence or abuse of youth,” said Lenore Lukasik, chair of the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres. “I think it’s absolutely OK for us to draw that line.”
Bill 37, the Protecting Students Act, was implemented in 2016. The bill was criticized at the time by the college for not being tough enough.
An ongoing Star investigation has found that Bill 37 is part of a system that doesn’t prevent teachers who’ve abused their students from moving school-to-school. In the wake of the Star’s investigation, education critics at Queen’s Park are calling on the provincial government to close a legislative loophole.
“The bill should be strengthened,” MPP Peggy Sattler, the NDP education critic, told the Star. “Very serious and egregious sexual misconduct can take place that doesn’t fall into those specific acts and should be grounds for revocation of a licence.
“It’s indefensible to have a teacher who has engaged in those kinds of activities with a student in front of a classroom,” she said. “Which is not to say that people don’t deserve second chances, but in another career.”
The inappropriate messages to a student were not the first time Buckley had been disciplined.
At another school in early 2007, Buckley had become “infatuated” with a female colleague identified as “A” in a college disciplinary file. They lived near each other and would carpool to work, but after a few months, she told him she no longer wished to keep up the arrangement. “A” said she turned down his advances, though Buckley continued to call “A” at her home repeatedly.
She told him to stay away from her, but Buckley approached her again on at least one other occasion, the college wrote.
On Sept.11, 2008, “A” wrote Buckley a letter advising him not to approach her in any way and to stay away from her, according to the college. The next day, Buckley approached her at a staff party and a verbal altercation ensued during which Buckley “threw the letter at her.”
Eleven days later, Buckley was charged by police and, in March 2009, a judge found him guilty of criminal harassment. Buckley received a conditional discharge with 12 months of probation.
He was transferred by his board to a new school.
Bluewater District School Board, located in central Ontario with schools in Bruce and Grey counties, declined to comment on his case since he’s no longer employed by the board. Neither Buckley nor his lawyer responded to multiple requests for comment from the Star.
After his transfer, a female student at Buckley’s new school expressed interest in one of the classes he taught in the 2013-’14 academic year. The two began communicating electronically, initially via his board email account. When she attempted to connect with him on Facebook, Buckley said it was his policy not to “friend” students on the social media site, suggesting she text him instead.
In those texts, Buckley asked her for a photo of her breasts and whether her boyfriend had seen her naked, according to an agreed statement of facts from his disciplinary hearing. There would be no physical intimacy until she was no longer a student, he told her.
At one point, on an undisclosed date, Buckley was hospitalized because of mental illness and contacted the student to tell her he was going to kill himself. She was scared of Buckley, the college notes in its April 2017 decision, but also feared for his safety and well-being if she were to “cut things off.”
“I don’t want to lose you. I can’t endure it,” he wrote in a message to her.
An investigation into Buckley’s conduct began after a parent of the girl’s friend reached out to the school. Buckley was fired from Bluewater District in 2014 and in April 2017 he faced the college’s disciplinary panel for the second time in a decade.
Buckley was found guilty of sexually and psychologically abusing the female student. He was given a 24-month licence suspension and coursework.
Once those are complete, he’ll be back in good standing with the college, and able to resume teaching in Ontario classrooms.
“The committee would have ordered revocation rather than a suspension,” the disciplinary committee wrote this year. “If the committee believed there was no hope for the member’s rehabilitation.”
Through the college disciplinary process, the Star has identified 27 cases in Ontario since 2012 where a teacher was investigated, disciplined and transferred by their board to another school for a fresh start.
In all of those cases, the college’s disciplinary panel — made up of publicly appointed and teacher-elected college members — substantiated allegations of sexual, physical, psychological, verbal abuse or serious misconduct by those teachers.
Not all incidents warranting discipline reach the College of Teachers and become public. The college handles cases that are reported to them, whether by the school board, other teachers or by a member of the public. Incidents handled by a school board only are kept sealed in human resources files.
In nine of the 27 cases identified, the teachers had reoffended at their new school. Four of these teachers’ new principals knew why they were moved, through what’s called a disciplinary or administrative transfer. But it’s unclear how much the remaining 23 principals knew.
When confronted with the transfer cases the Star identified, Progressive Conservative Leader and education critic Patrick Brown also called on the current provincial government to take action.
“I’m calling on the government today to put measures in place to ensure that this does not happen again,” he wrote to the Star in late November. “If they refuse, a PC gov- ernment will do it for them. There is no higher priority for our school system than the safety of our children.”
The legislature rose on Dec. 14. The current Liberal government could have its legislative council working on amendments to Bill 37, to be introduced in the spring session, MPP Sattler said.
“I think it could be done fairly quickly, and they’ve got the research already done. There are volumes and volumes of research,” she said, noting two former reviews into teacher misconduct in Ontario: the Robins Report and the LeSage Review.
The provincial government moved to strengthen a similar law for health-care professionals last year after a Star campaign. An old system automatically revoked licences for penetration, oral sex or masturbation between health-care professionals, such as doctors, and their patients. Bill 87 named the Protecting Patients Act, made revocation mandatory as well for forms of sexual touching and groping.
“I was aware of the situation around physicians and other healthcare professionals, and the changes. But I’d only assumed it would be similar with this college because you can’t put sexual violence in such a strict hierarchy,” said Ontario rape crisis centre chair Lukasik.
Sexual harassment is dealt with on a case-by-case basis for physicians’ licence revocation, as it is with teachers. In the case of teachers, behaviour or remarks of a sexual nature towards students is clearly classified by the college as sexual abuse, but does not result in automatic revocation, as it now does for doctors.
Former education minister Mitzie Hunter, now the minister of Advanced Education and Skills Development, declined to answer the Star’s questions on whether she felt the Protecting Students Act should be amended, as suggested by Sattler, to encompass more forms of sexual abuse.
The existing bill “strengthened protections for students and improved information sharing between (the college) and school boards so that student safety is prioritized,” she wrote in an emailed statement.
“We expect school boards to make student safety and well-being their top priority and will continue to work with all of our partners to improve ways to prioritize student safety.”
In another emailed statement, the ministry highlighted the college’s discretion to revoke a teacher’s licence.
“There are activities that lead to automatic revocation of a teacher’s certificate; however, the (college) Discipline Committee is also able to revoke a teacher’s certificate for other acts of sexual abuse or professional misconduct,” said a statement sent by spokesperson Heather Irwin.
Irwin cited the Protecting Students Act, saying any teacher convicted of sexual abuse or misconduct will permanently have that information up on the college’s website. “It’s also important to note that no teacher in Ontario is permitted to teach in a publicly funded school without being a member of the OCT in good standing,” she said.
When the college has flexibility on disciplinary action, the requirements to return to “good standing,” precedent can sometimes take priority over public interest.
In the 2012 disciplinary decision for Anthony John Park, a teacher transferred between schools despite allegations of a sexual nature, as examined in the Star’s first story in this series, the college’s disciplinary committee noted their frustration with the penalty process.
Park had been transferred the first time after inappropriate interactions with two female students on a field trip. At his new school, he made continued sexual comments toward his students, including telling a young girl he’d warm her up instead of her going to get a sweater, describing plants in class in inappropriate and sexual ways (“A stem is long, sometimes it goes hard, sometimes it’s soft”) and pointing out that he could see a girl’s underwear. His conduct escalated to such a point that he was fired from the board.
Park’s counsel and the college’s counsel had submitted a joint statement on what Park’s penalty should be. Unless a jointly submitted penalty is a severe departure from an appropriate penalty, the college committee is bound to accept it. But the disciplinary committee was worried — especially considering that the proposed three month suspension didn’t adequately address Park’s repeated pattern of issues.
“There was no attempt to respond to the concerns of the committee,” the document says. “By solely harnessing the committee to an examination of cases and appeals by precedent, (counsel for both sides) effectively shut down any effort to respond to current public interest.”
Park received a three-month suspension, plus coursework. After satisfying those conditions, he too would be in good standing (though Park’s licence was suspended later that year for non-payment of fees).
“The committee is truly dismayed,” the decision said. “It is hoped that in the future our concerns as guardians of the public trust will be considered . . . most particularly about the issue of recidivism.” Victoria Gibson can be reached at vgibson@thestar.ca. Vjosa Isai can be reached at 416-869-4729.
“We should (never have) folks continue teaching when they cross those lines, when they engage in any form of sexual violence or abuse of youth.” LENORE LUKASIK CHAIR OF ONTARIO COALITION OF RAPE CRISIS CENTRES