Canada.com - Nov 3, 2007

In a Moncton courtroom, an 18-year-old girl sobbed when her teacher-turned-lover Christopher Andre Cassidy was declared guilty of sexual exploitation in 2006 despite her testimony that their 10-month relationship was mutual and they were still in love.

One of the women called to the stand at Tom Ellison's sensational trial in Vancouver said she begged the ruggedly handsome outdoors-program teacher to take her virginity and that he did not deserve to be convicted for their consensual liaison when she was 17.

A film director, whose documentary about the Ellison case was broadcast last week, has revealed she, too, had a brief affair with a teacher decades ago, but refuses to subject him to prosecution.

Although there has long been zero tolerance for these kinds of goings-on, sexual relationships or romantic liaisons between teachers and students persist, as evidenced in highly publicized cases like the Ellison one and in pages of infractions detailed in professional teacher journals across Canada today.

In cases involving sex between teachers and minor students, there are often grounds for criminal charges, usually a count of sexual exploitation, which forbids adults in a position of trust from engaging in intimacy or intercourse with anyone under 18 -- even if they consent. But there are myriad murky instances that would never meet the test of a criminal prosecution, where professional bodies, school boards, unions or provincial teacher-certification agencies are left to judge conduct that falls into the vast, grey area between overly friendly mentor and sexual predator.

Teachers are consistently warned that they cannot equate the classroom with any other workplace environment where romances spark. One Ontario board even banned email exchanges between students and teachers, seeing the informality as setting the wrong tone.

Yet time and again, teachers lose their licences, are suspended or are publicly humiliated for carrying on inappropriately with students. So why and how does it happen?

Michael Manley-Casimir, former dean of the faculty of education at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., said problems occur when teachers forget that the role of the teacher must prevail above all else.

"The distinction basically is this -- you can have a young, 18-year-old woman in a Grade 12 class and you can have a 24-year-old young man who is qualified as a teacher who might be teaching that class. In the context of our general society, a relationship between a 24-year-old young man and an 18-year-old female ... is perfectly acceptable. They might become involved, they might have an intimate relationship, they might get married, they might do all sorts of things together outside the school," said Prof. Manley-Casimir, who co-authored a book called Teachers in Trouble: An Exploration of the Normative Character of Teaching.

"In school, however, their roles and relationships shift. The 18-year-old is a student first. The teacher is a teacher first ... During the time they are teacher and student, there is a special relationship which is inevitably confounded by any other kind of relationship. The defining feature of the relationship is the role of teacher."

George Dickinson, a professor of education and law at the University of Western Ontario, says there are common themes among these behavioural lapses and some areas that tend to be flash points: "It can be outdoor ed., it can be bands and sports teams. The kinds of things where you're associating with students outside the classroom and in contexts which are slightly more intimate than they would be in the sterility of the school."

Sometimes the teacher has personal problems at home and finds a kinship with a student. And in some cases, the relationship can even be a two-way street.

"There can be a kind of a reliance, a trust, a looking-up-to, or kind of adoration for someone in a position of authority," he said. "And in a lot of cases, too, some of the teachers aren't a heck of a lot older than some of the students."

Ontario and British Columbia are the only two Canadian provinces that use independent self-regulating colleges solely responsible for meting out discipline to their teacher members.

Among these rulings, sexual or romantic trysts with students are all too common -- though they are often swathed in euphemistic jargon like "failing to maintain the standards of the profession," or "engaging in conduct unbecoming of a member."

The penalty for engaging in sex with a student is usually revocation of the teaching certificate. However, a B.C. Court of Appeal decision in 2006 found teacher David Michael Young was punished too harshly in 1998 when his licence was cancelled for having sex with an 18-year-old student 10 years his junior. Shortly after the landmark ruling, he was investigated again on fresh allegations.

A Kingston, Ont. teacher who was certified in 2006 lost her licence for striking up a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old male student "that included being alone together inside and outside the school, buying and consuming alcohol together, hugging and kissing in the school library and having intercourse in the boy's apartment."

In Sechelt, B.C., accounting instructor Heather Ingram was villainized for her sexual liaison with high school student Dustin Dickeson, just a few months shy of his 18th birthday. She was found guilty and sentenced to house arrest -- even though the two continued the relationship and the "boy" eventually proposed.

Ms. Ingram said in a book that she knew it was wrong, but that she had fallen in love with a younger man who made her feel special and sexy after a cold, common-law marriage and her mother's illness. And Dusty "Straight A" Dickeson came out publicly, recording a rap album in which he proclaimed that he was no victim, but a willing participant in the affair.