Torso video has no place in the classroom
A Montreal teacher was fired Thursday for showing a Grade 10 class what is believed to be the video of the body-parts killing of university student Jun Lin.
With debate raging over whether the teacher should have been disciplined, Herald columnist Licia Corbella weighs in, suggesting the video could scar those required to watch it.
This column comes with a Triple-X rating. Its contents, though real and necessary for the understanding of this topic, are so disturbing it should not be read by children or youths.
On Wednesday, news broke that a Montreal high school teacher showed his Grade 10 class of boys and girls the video of what is purported to be the murder, dismemberment, decapitation, rape and cannibalism of 33-year-old Concordia University student Jun Lin at the hands of Luka Rocco Magnotta.
The 29-year-old supply teacher, who inexplicably has not been named, was immediately suspended with pay on June 4 after disturbed students in his classroom told the principal of Cavelier-de-LaSalle High School that the teacher had just played the grisly video in class.
On Thursday, after a disciplinary hearing, the teacher was fired. Montreal police now say they are considering laying criminal charges against this teacher, as they should. After all, if a 29-yearold man lured 15- and 16-year-old kids to his home and showed them even soft pornography, he would potentially face Criminal Code offences.
How much worse is it for an adult in a position of authority to show what is assumed to be a real-life crime to a room of captive students who are subject to his influence and the pressure of peers in the class?
Apparently, the teacher asked for a show of hands from students if they wanted to watch the video.
I have seen many disturbing things in my 25 years in this business — including accident and crime scenes — but this is by far the worst.
Most of the 25 students in the class apparently said they did. Reportedly, three did not. But since when is curriculum at a public school determined by a show of hands?
Mahfooz Kanwar, professor emeritus of criminology at Mount Royal University, says the fact that the teacher is entrusted with the care of minors makes what he did even more troubling.
“I wouldn’t dream of playing such a video to my students and I teach criminology to adults,” Kanwar said. “I would be very upset as a parent if a teacher exposed my children to such potentially damaging material.”
As a parent, I would sue if some teacher corrupted my children in that way.
Kanwar says some children, regardless of what they are saying now, could be “scarred for life as a result of this teacher’s decision.”
That the teacher asked for a show of hands in the class is irrelevant, Kanwar added, since they are not yet at the age of consent and many couldn’t have known just how disturbing the film was. Even hardened Montreal homi- cide detectives say the film disturbed them greatly.
But already, the moral relativists and apologists for depravity are coming out of the woodwork, supporting the teacher. Some of his students have started a petition in support of the history teacher, who apparently recently became a father. Many adults are, too.
So, is this all much ado about little? I don’t think so. On Wednesday night, as I contemplated writing about this, I reluctantly watched the video, which is, obscenely, still available on the Internet.
I wept bitter tears as I watched, felt as though I might throw up and had trouble sleeping.
While I’m not going to go into all of the details, I think it’s important for those who feel compelled to defend this teacher to know what he exposed these young, impressionable minds to. So, please don’t read on if you don’t want to know.
At first, the video shows a man lying on a bed naked. He is bound, gagged and blindfolded. He stirs slightly. Next, another man enters the picture and begins repeatedly stabbing the body, which no longer moves. Over and over, more than 100 times by my count.
I don’t dare watch it again and I didn’t take extremely thorough notes, but after that, when the killer removes the black mask on the victim’s face, it’s evident that the neck has been cut.
The video then shows the severing of limbs, and a decapitated head.
Next is a series of sexual assaults and apparent cannibalism.
Remember, 15- and 16-year-olds had to watch this as part of their history and civics class.
Feel like defending this teacher now? Still think there’s any legitimate historical or civ- ics lesson here?
I have seen many disturbing things in my 25 years in this business — including accident and crime scenes — but this is by far the worst. By far. I still feel very wobbly and unsettled by what I witnessed and it’s my hope that if you were planning on coming to the defence of this teacher, that this written account of the utter indignity and brutality visited upon Jun Lin, his family and now these students, you will reconsider.
It’s believed Lin was murdered on May 25. His torso was found four days later inside a suitcase behind a Montreal apartment. Lin’s feet and hands were mailed in several packages to political party offices in Ottawa and to schools in B.C.
In a beautiful letter published Tuesday, Jun Lin’s parents described their only son as a compassionate, kind person. Here’s hoping they have not heard of this thoughtless teacher and the comments of many of the students and adults coming to his defence.
On Thursday night, a candlelight vigil was held in Lin’s honour. Money has been raised to help his devastated family, who are in Montreal, and an award has been set up in Lin’s memory by Concordia University.
A makeshift memorial has sprouted near the statue of Norman Bethune, the Canadian physician who is revered in China for his humanitarian work there in the early 1900s. The statue stands near a main Concordia building.
Perhaps discussing Bethune, or how to help Lin’s devastated family, would have provided better lessons for that history and civics class. That’s how a “good” teacher could turn an X-rated topic into an appropriate civics lesson for his students.