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Two British Columbia teachers have been banned from the profession for 15 years after admitting to having “intimate relationships” with former students.
One of the teachers employed two former students at their private company after they graduated, sleeping in the same room as one and having an “intimate personal relationship” with another.
The other teacher entered into “inappropriately intimate relationships” with three former students and told one of them what to say to “protect” him from school staff.
The British Columbia Commissioner for Teacher Regulation released reports concerning both teachers earlier this month.
Both teachers have been kept completely anonymous – with one even having their sex kept secret – in an effort to prevent the students being identified.
According to the Commissioner, one of the teachers – a man – entered into relationships with students “in or around 2005 to 2008.”
He developed an intimate relationship with one of the students shortly after that student graduated.
The teacher “spent time” with the student and they exchanged messages over MSN Messenger, including “sexual content.”
With another student the teacher had developed a relationship with, he told the student how to “protect” him after he “became aware of concerns by School staff about this relationship.”
He also used MSN Messenger to communicate with a third student, whom he invited for a social get-together when the student was 19.
The teacher resigned from his school district in December 2020 and entered into a consent resolution agreement with the Commissioner in 2022.
He was found to have committed professional misconduct and banned from teaching for 15 years.
The Commissioner said he “used his position of trust as a teacher to elicit sensitive personal information from two students and use that information to his personal advantage;” “told a student what to say and do in order to ‘protect’ him when he became aware of concerns by School staff about this relationship;” and “had a pattern of breaching his professional boundaries by developing relationships with students while they were students, and subsequently developing these relationships into more intimate relationships.”
No timeline was provided to show when the other teacher's inappropriate relationships occurred.
According to the Commissioner, that teacher hired two ex-students as employees of their company shortly after the students graduated.
The company required travel, the report explains, and on three occasions the teacher shared “close quarters” with one of the former students, which made the former student feel “uncomfortable.”
The other student – referred to as “Student B” in the report – also travelled with the teacher.
“During this trip, the Teacher entered into an intimate personal relationship with Student B,” the report explains.
“Student B quit the job approximately one week after returning from the trip.”
As a consequence of the two complaints, the teacher was suspended for ten days without pay by the district in April 2020.
The Commissioner later determined the teacher’s actions constituted professional misconduct.
The teacher was then banned from the profession for 15 years.
“In determining that a fifteen-year ban on reapplication is an appropriate consequence, the Commissioner considered the following factors: a. The Teacher engaged in a patte[r]n of behaviour involving inappropriate relationships with recently-graduated former students,” the report says.
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