By Bre McAdam

‘I thought he was 18’ says Saskatoon teacher accused of luring boy

Jan 21, 2015 | 7:46 AM

A former Saskatoon elementary school teacher says he was in a troubled relationship and heavily using marijuana when he asked a boy who he believed was 18 years old to send nude photos and engage in sex acts.

What he didn’t know was that he was actually exchanging messages with a police officer posing as the boy on Facebook.
 
That boy, who is currently 17 years old and cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was Jayson Clark Kennard’s former student. Kennard, who had been teaching since 1997, taught the alleged victim science at Dundonald Elementary School before he was arrested and subsequently terminated from the school division in 2013.
 
The 40 year old is now on trial, charged with luring a child for the purpose of facilitating child pornography after asking the former student to video chat and send pictures of his genitals.
 
But Kennard testified that he never engaged in sexual conversations with the boy until after what he believed to be the alleged victim’s 18th birthday. In May 2013, he said he asked the boy when he turned 18 and the boy replied “in a couple of weeks.” The alleged victim denies that response, but there is no evidence of the conversation because both he and Kennard deleted the alleged Facebook messages.  
 
The boy’s birthday was in fact that month, but he was turning 16 years old.
 
Court heard Kennard initiated a Facebook conversation with the boy in late 2012 after the boy and his mother stopped by Kennard’s classroom to chat about how the boy was doing in high school. The accused said he knew the boy would have been in Grade 10 at the time, but his age was never mentioned.
 
He said he messaged his former student to say he was proud of his progress and to make sure he was being safe when it came to drug use.
 
“He was a troubled kid,” Kennard testified as his reason for showing concern.
 
When asked how old he thought the boy was at that time, Kennard said he believed he was either 16 or 17 years old. He said it’s the same response he gave when his ex-boyfriend saw Kennard’s messages and inquired about the boy’s age.
 
Both the boy and Kennard testified that the conversations were non-sexual at first. Things changed in March 2013 when the boy posted a shirtless photo of himself on Facebook, prompting Kennard to call him “sexy” and “cute.” He also encouraged him to take more photos.
 
“I was sexually attracted to him,” Kennard said as he started to cry.
 
But he backed-off when the boy said the comments made him uncomfortable, Kennard told the court. He said the two stopped messaging each other until the boy re-initiated a Facebook conversation a few months later.
 
Shortly after, Kennard saw more shirtless photos of the boy and asked “oh man, when do you turn 18.” He testified that the boy’s answer, along with his behaviour, led him to believe the boy would soon be legal age.
 
In June 2013, he asked his former student “how was yer birthday,” to which the boy replied “it was good.” The messages were shown in court. Kennard said he had deleted all messages before that day because he liked to regularly clean out his inbox and didn’t want his boyfriend of five years, who he lived with at the time, to think he was cheating.
 
However, Kennard told the court that no sexual messages or requests for nude photos were sent before Aug. 22, 2013. That’s when he asked the alleged victim to smoke marijuana with him at his home and warned him that he might be masturbating in the meantime. 
 
The boy’s mother found those messages on her son’s laptop and reported Kennard to police. An officer with the Saskatchewan Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit took over the boy’s Facebook account the next week.
 
Not knowing he was speaking with a police officer, Kennard asked the boy if he was “horny” and offered to perform oral sex on him at his home while his boyfriend was sleeping. He also requested photos of the boy’s penis and asked him to video chat while nude.
 
Kennard testified that he deleted those conversations so that his ex-boyfriend wouldn’t see them, not because he thought what he was doing was illegal.
 
“I was just in complete shock. I didn’t know what was happening,” he testified, through tears, when detailing how police arrested him during a planning session at Dundonald school the next day.
 
Crown: Kennard did not take reasonable steps to ensure boy was 18
 
During cross-examination, Kennard said he had received training on how to act appropriately with students and was aware of a school policy that prohibited teachers from contacting both current and former students over Facebook.
 
Crown prosecutor Michael Segu said it didn’t make sense for Kennard to suddenly forget how old the boy was after only two years of not seeing him. If the boy was 18 years old in 2013, that means he would have been 12 or 13 in Grade 6 when he was Kennard’s student, Segu pointed out. The accused said he was not aware of the boy being held back a grade.
 
In his closing arguments, Segu said it was Kennard’s responsibility to establish the boy’s true age, and that he “utterly failed to do so.”
 
Kennard agreed with Segu that he was more concerned with having sex with the boy than he was with asking follow-up questions to ensure he was over age. The boy talked about engaging in typical teenage behavior, lived with his mom and didn’t look old for his age, Segu said, adding Kennard could have asked “a thousand questions” if he truly thought the boy was on the brink of turning 18 years old.
 
Kennard said his comments made to the undercover police officer about keeping the sexual acts a secret and not wanting anyone to know had to do with hiding it from his ex-boyfriend. But Segu argued the accused wouldn’t have invited the boy over to his house—or asked him to video chat nude—while his boyfriend was home if he was only concerned about his partner finding out. 
 
Instead, Segu said Kennard deleted the sexually-graphic messages and told the boy not to tell anyone about his requests because he knew he was asking an underage boy for sex. 
 
But defence lawyer Brad Mitchell argued his client did take reasonable steps to establish the boy’s age by asking him when he turned 18, even though there is no evidence of the conversation.
 
Justice Geoffrey Dufour asked Mitchell if it was reasonable for Kennard to rely on only one answer. Mitchell said it was.
 
He told the court there were no “representations” that the alleged victim was under 18, either through conversations with the boy himself or the undercover police officer. The first sexual messages were sent months after Kennard believed the boy had turned 18, Mitchell pointed out in his closing arguments.
 
Dufour has reserved his decision until March.

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