Former teacher found guilty of luring ex-student over Facebook

During his trial, Kennard testified that he was in a troubled relationship and heavily using marijuana when he unknowingly exchanged messages with a police officer posing as the boy on Facebook. Kennard asked who he thought was his former student if he could perform oral sex on him; when the undercover officer said no, the ex-teacher asked for a picture of the boy’s genitals.

Kennard testified that he never engaged in sexual conversations with the boy until after what he believed to be the 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.

Dufour agreed with Crown prosecutor Michael Segu that 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 during his closing arguments.

The accused said he was not aware of the boy being held back a grade.

Details of the case

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.
Kennard 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.

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by Bre McAdam

Former teacher found guilty of luring ex-student over Facebook

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