‘Unsettling’ report finds 252 school personnel accused of sexual offences

A Manitoba counsellor says a report into sexual offences committed by school personnel in Canada is “unsettling.”

The report from the Winnipeg-based Canadian Centre for Child Protection says 252 current or former school personnel committed or were accused of committing offences of a sexual nature against 548 children over a five-year span.

It says another 38 personnel were criminally charged for child pornography-related offences during the same time frame of 2017 to 2021.

“It’s unsettling when people are put in a position of authority and parents and children are putting their trust in those folks to take care of our vulnerable population, in this case children, and help then develop into healthy individuals. This is not what we want to hear,” said counsellor Mikayla Lanoie.

Lanoie says studies show any abuse can have major impacts on young children and can affect their adulthood.

“If there’s a relationship in a power of authority anytime in anyone’s life, that power and balance can have negative cognitive consequences,” said Lanoie. “But especially on a developing mind, that impact can get worse.”

Increase in abuse reports

The data shows an increase in abuse reports since the last study was released in 2018, which found 714 current or former employees were linked to sexual offences of some nearly 1,300 students between 1997 and 2017.

The report includes anyone working in a school environment, including teachers and administrative staff.

“This report, as well as the other one, is the only pan-Canadian view of what is happening in schools, including all school personnel, so not specific to one sector, it includes everybody,” said Noni Classen, the director of education at the CCCP.

“It paints that picture of what we can see and what is going on.”

Victims were mostly female (71%)

Some other statistics from the report:

• 71 per cent of the victims were female and 29 per cent were male
• 37 per cent of all the offences involved physical contact
• 74 per cent of the offenders were coaches
• Nearly 60 per cent of all the offences took place on school property

The report says snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook were the social media platforms most commonly used to facilitate victimization.

“This is a bigger problem than we were able to actually present, because we know these numbers really aren’t reflective of the totality of what is happening,” said Classen.

“Really alarmed about what we found in the data.”

Recommendations to protect students

The report made key recommendations to protect students in schools:

• Establishing independent bodies to receive and investigate complaints
• Making disciplinary records around the offences public
• Mandating training programs for all school personnel in all provinces
• More supports for students who are victimized in the school environment

Classen says there has been a lot of positive work completed but says more needs to be done.

“We have to do better,” she said. “We have to push together to demand that the systems are modernized and that we have the right mechanisms so that we can protect children.”

The Manitoba government is proposing changes following the report including improving information and public reporting, and standardizing mandatory training and professional learning.

—With files from The Canadian Press