Haven't We Seen this Somewhere Before?

"Teachers should not be allowed to be transferred to another school who have been found guilty of some type of sexual misconduct or indiscretion with students."
"It bothers me that these individual teachers are allowed to move to another school and start all over again."
"One wrong just creates another wrong by transferring. I don't think the answer is to transfer them, but as I said, to deal with it."
Nick Scarfo, assistant professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

"Something is not aligning. I don't understand how the changes that were made in Bill 37 in particular and the process changes that the Ontario College of Teachers have put in place, how this hasn't prevented these kinds of issues."
"This is non-negotiable. You do not want people who have engaged in sexual abuse of students in the Classroom. Full stop."
MPP Peggy Sattler, education critic for the Ontario NDP 

"De Luca easily moved from school to school, leaving behind emotionally wounded victims, with a fresh opportunity to victimize others."
"How could this abuse have gone unchecked for 20 years [Justice Robins wrote 20 years ago]? What can be done to ensure that this will not happen again?"
(retired) Judge Sydney L. Robins

"My school wasn't his first stop, believe it or not. I didn't have a choice in the matter."
"I was totally compromised."
"You have these predators that are in the school system, and everybody wants to give them a chance, but nobody says 'OK, that's enough'."
Retired School principal

Francesco Ciraco (left), sexually assaulted his colleague inside the school elevator in April 2009. He was sent home for three days and transferred to a new school. Ciraco was charged criminally and found guilty in court for the assault, but received an absolute discharge – a finding of guilt without registering a conviction or giving a criminal record. Richard Knill (centre) is currently facing criminal charges for sexual assault and sexual exploitation of two female students. Riaz Khamis (right) pleaded guilty at the College to allegations of professional misconduct including taking non-consensual photographs of his students and storing them with downloaded images of naked women.  (Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star/submitted image)

People in places of trust, betraying the belief that the trust placed in them in their moral obligation to treat their colleagues and the students their profession is meant to guide through the education system have spurned that trust as they chose to release their basest instincts in a succession of predatory pursuits. It was a bleak, dark open secret among parishioners in churches throughout the civilized world that there were some priests and other clerics who abused the trust placed in them as the gossip circuit warmed to the need to be vigilant but failed to protect children exposed to the wiles of such predators.

That the institution of the church had itself established a long tradition of never examining the issue to eradicate that black whisper of bad priests and ruined young lives, choosing instead to protect its reputation by seeing no evil, hearing no evil and routinely moving the evil to another location where a predator-priest's proclivities and actions were unknown to the locals and where he could simply repeat the predations was a moral scandal of incredulous proportions that severely diminished the respect in which the church was held, helping in no small part to accelerate the already-in-progress loss of community support.

Aside from the sanctity of the church environment, only the educational system of community-based primary and secondary schools represented a more safe environment for children in parents' minds. And then there were rumours and the occasional public airing of sexual abuse of schoolchildren on the part of teachers. That these occurrences were rare did not much affect the outrage of the public, aghast that children were being violated. And when the same things were being revealed in sports where trusted coaches were revealed to have similarly abused those in their care, the widespread nature of abuse was fully revealed.

In a climate of sexual persecution and harassment amid increasing reports of violent sexual attacks being aired regularly in the world of celebrity culture, comes word that in Ontario, teachers who have offended the social and professional moral code through sexual misconduct have been treated in the very same manner as the church did their criminal-conduct priests; spiriting them away to other schools where their crimes were unknown, enabling them in effect, to continue their predation in fresh hunting grounds their new school assignments represented represented another betrayal.

The Toronto District School Board had active files on 13 teachers known to have been sexually abusive to their teaching colleagues or to the students they taught. These abusive teachers in their state of authority betrayed were given fresh assignments outside the school where they had offended, placed in a new school where five of the teachers went on to re-offend and eight still remain employed in Toronto while two retired since their alternate placement.

In 2003, the Ontario College of Teachers considered a case that has now been presented before the courts in Brampton, Ontario just outside Toronto, where Richard Knill faces criminal charges on sexual assault and sexual exploitation of female students. This is a man who had allegations levelled against him of sexual abuse of students dating back to 1992 and for the following 25 years he practised sexual abuse of students at various locations, and in that period was transferred to other schools no fewer than three times.

One of the charges involved a sport team where he coached and became involved with a 15-year-old girl. Driving her to a church "While the vehicle was stopped at a traffic light, the member [Knill] then leaned over, pulled down the front of the student's top and started kissing and licking her left breast", wrote the college in their disciplinary decision, after the student had reported the incident to authorities. Criminally charged with sexual assault and breach of trust, he was found not guilty, was suspended for two months, was required to be assessed by a psychiatrist and to take a boundaries course.

He went on to continue teaching at various schools, the final one from 2004 to 2017. And in June was criminally charged in the sexual exploitation of a 17-year-old girl at the high school he was currently teaching at. Once that charged was announced, another woman brought allegations of sexual misconduct against this serial offender, following decades when she had remained silent about the abuse she had been exposed to.

Back in 2008 a Toronto district teacher, Riaz Khamis, was accused by a group of girls at the high school he taught at of touching them with inappropriate comments. He was transferred to another school in the same board. Five years on he pleaded guilty to allegations of professional misconduct for taking non-consensual photographs of students at the new school, storing them with downloaded images of naked women on a phone which he permitted students access to. When the photos were seen by female students, four reported him to their principal who reported to the disciplinary committee of the Teachers' college. This man now teaches at Scarborough's Woburn Collegiate Institute in the same school board.

Francesco Ciraco of Toronto's Catholic board in 2009 assaulted a teaching colleague inside the school elevator. Alone inside the elevator together, he kissed the woman, cupped her breast, squeezed her buttocks, kissed the exposed part of her breast. She shoved him away from her. He was transferred to a new school. Charged criminally, he was found guilty, requested a retrial and was once again found guilty. Despite which he received an absolute discharge. Having served a period of probation, the college found him guilty of professional misconduct suspending him for six months.

He is employed still as a teacher at Our Lady of the Assumption in North Toronto. The legislation meant to prevent students from being abused by teachers, Bill 37, the Protecting Students Act, under which there is no requirement for teachers to have their licenses automatically revoked by the college other than for cases of sexual abuse against their students which includes intercourse, masturbation, child pornography of genital-to-genital, genital-to-oral, anal-to-genital, and oral-to-anal contacts. Outside of these gross infractions, there is no provincial requirement for a teaching license to be revoked.