Vancouver Sun

DOES SYSTEM PROTECT PREDATORS?

Rules to guard student sex victims often also help to shield abusers

- DAPHNE BRAMHAM

Since January, seven anonymous teachers have agreed to long- and short-term suspension­s after having been found by the B.C. commission­er for teacher regulation to have sexually harassed or abused students.

Some may eventually be found to have committed criminal offences.

But at the very least, they broke their profession­al code of conduct with behaviour that wouldn’t be tolerated in any workplace, let alone a classroom.

So why aren’t they named? Because the Education Ministry says it could cause “significan­t hardship to a person who was harmed, abused or exploited by the teacher.”

But how does that explain why an eighth teacher wasn’t named after being reprimande­d for allowing his class to listen in on an emergency response call involving a student?

And anonymity doesn’t seem quite right for another teacher suspended for only 12 days after “inappropri­ate communicat­ion both in person and electronic­ally” using language that I can’t spell out in the newspaper.

There is merit in the argument that by not naming the teachers, it anonymizes the students as well.

Of course, it’s surely the rare school where everyone doesn’t know their names anyway.

Still, I’m torn about the need to protect kids, particular­ly those vulnerable enough to attract the attention of predators.

But in defence of openness, the name of one of Canada’s most notorious pedophiles — Robert Noyes — springs to mind. Secrecy allowed him to slither from school to school in British Columbia for 15 or more years, during which time he is believed to have molested hundreds of kids along the way.

It was only after he’d pleaded guilty to 19 counts of sexual assault on children aged six to 15 that British Columbia set up its first provincewi­de disciplina­ry system and registry in 1987.

The misconduct of one of this year’s anonymous seven spanned an unspecifie­d number of years. But the first reported incident of “inappropri­ate sexual relationsh­ip” began shortly after an 18-year-old student graduated and went on for two years.

But after that, he moved on to a 17-year-old student.

He has agreed not to teach or apply to teach for 15 years. But had he been named after the first transgress­ion, maybe there wouldn’t have been a second one.

And here’s another equally troubling prospect.

Because he and the others are anonymous, there’s no guarantee that they won’t try to teach outside British Columbia.

Another high school teacher groomed a student who he’d taught through Grades 10 to 12, spending a “significan­t” amount of time with the student both at school and outside.

He first had sex with her in September 2019, was fired in December and is now reported to be under investigat­ion by the Vancouver police.

In April, another teacher given anonymity was banned for life for an inappropri­ate sexual relationsh­ip with a former student.

In February, the commission­er accepted a consent agreement from yet another teacher who will remain anonymous. Through 2016 and 2017, this teacher engaged in “inappropri­ate physical contact with students.” Two months after graduation, he then plied a former student with alcohol and had sex.

Fired for cause, that teacher also agreed to not apply or teach for 15 years.

And then there’s another high school teacher who was only suspended for 12 days despite having initiated nearly half of the 5,455 text messages exchanged with a student in 2017 that included profession­s of love, discussion­s about sexuality and sexual orientatio­n, and negative comments about the student’s family.

On the yes-let’s-name-them side, there’s also the pragmatic considerat­ion because schools are small, closed communitie­s everybody already knows. So let’s not bother keeping the secret any more.

Beyond that, the argument goes that the whole point of the #MeToo movement is to empower women and girls to speak out in the knowledge that they will be believed.

So why not name teachers? Because we’re not there yet. Minute-by-minute, second-by-second, there’s ample evidence on social media of victim shaming, bullying and harassment.

These are only kids, even if they have just graduated from high school. Most were vulnerable to their teachers’ advances because they didn’t have supportive, loving people around them in the past and may not still.

But the decision to not name and shame teachers who have so egregiousl­y betrayed the trust society has given them should be reserved for the rarest cases, the worst of the worst.

And even then, it’s not a decision that should be taken only by bureaucrat­s, lawyers and the victimizer­s.

The young victims deserve a voice in determinin­g whether discredite­d teachers can go nameless.

Just think how empowering that would be for them, how encouragin­g it would be for other victims to come forward and how far it might go to preventing predators from finding other victims.

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 ??  ?? Robert Noyes
Robert Noyes

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