Ex-olympian teacher disciplined for misconduct
An Ottawa teacher and former Olympian has lost his teaching licence for two years after a disciplinary committee found him guilty of professional misconduct for having an “inappropriate” relationship with a female student.
Lawrence Edgar Keyte, 49, a former teacher with at Richard Pfaff Secondary Alternative Program, was also ordered to enrol, at his own expense, in a course about appropriate boundaries and boundary violations.
Keyte said he is not going to return to teaching at the high school level.
Keyte and a student began a four-month email relationship in October 2007, according to an agreed statement of facts in a decision posted on the Ontario College of Teachers website.
Keyte began emailing with the student when he asked her to submit photos from a field trip.
The student emailed those pictures and included a photo of herself kissing another girl, which initiated a series of “flirtatious” emails back and forth, the decision said.
The student also sent the teacher a black-and-white photo of her in a bathtub covered in bubbles.
Keyte never discouraged the student from emailing him photos, the decision read.
The student’s then-boyfriend saw the emails and went to the school’s vice-principal.
After the emails were reported, Keyte created a personal email account to communicate with the student without using his school board address.
“The member was fully aware of the risks of his inappropriate conduct and counselled the student not to speak to anyone about their relationship and took steps to conceal their correspondence,” the decision said. “The lengthy suspension sends a very strong message to the profession and to the public that serious misconduct warrants serious consequences.”
The student began to feel “uncomfortable and gross” about the email exchanges with her teacher, the decision said.
The student left the school in April of 2008 for an unrelated reason and never returned, the decision said.
Keyte emailed the student on April 29, 2009, to apologize for any role he may have played in her decision to leave school. “As fun as it was, it was crazy of me to be flirting with a student and to put your sense of ease at school in jeopardy and to put everything I have at risk,” Keyte wrote to the student. “I take total responsibility for it all.”
Keyte was charged criminally in June 2010, but the charge was later withdrawn after a prosecutor acknowledged there was no reasonable prospect of convicting him.
Keyte represented Canada in the 1988 Summer Olympics at Seoul, South Korea, placing 33rd in the men’s individual modern pentathlon.