Keeping perverts out of schools

Wadsworth, a convicted pedophile who has a penchant for spanking kids, was declared a long-term offender last Thursday after being sentenced to 40-months for producing, possessing and distributing child pornography.

Initially, Wadsworth was busted for watching child porn while working as vice-principal at John Ronnie High School in 1999, for which he was fired by the Lester B. Pearson School Board “for immoral use of the Internet on school property” and then later received a 90-day conditional sentence. However, news reports from his porn case prompted students he exploited at an elementary school about a decade before to come forward and file complaints against him. In 2000, he was sentenced to five years for sexually assaulting nine students between 1979 and 1986 in Pincourt.

Before ending up at John Rennie, Wadsworth also worked at Greendale, Thorndale and Valois Park schools. While he taught at Greendale in 1988, he was accused of spanking a boy and also asking the nine-year-old to spank him. The case was thrown out at a preliminary hearing, apparently due to the lack of evidence. In hindsight, it seems it was a miscarriage of justice considering Wadsworth’s convictions for similar incidents that occurred before he worked at Greendale. Investigators should learn from this case that if one student makes a complaint, police need to rule out the possibility of other cases, especially if the educator has changed schools. Even the judge who sentenced Wadsworth at his sexual assault trial wondered out loud in court how many more victims there where but never came forward.

Quebec adopted new legislation last year calling for an ombudsman, to deal with students and parents unhappy on how their complaints have been dealt with, who would look into the matter and come up with corrective measures.

Wadsworth was only caught by accident when someone at John Rennie found a child spanking photo printed out in the administrative office. The Pearson board, to its credit, installed a program to monitor his Internet use and when they discovered Wadsworth spent over 30 hours a week viewing pornography, they went to police.

It could have made a major difference if students and parents had an easier time to report incidents when Wadsworth first started his career in order to prevent “passing the trash,” where a suspect teacher is moved from one school to another. If Wadsworth had been more careful with his Internet printing in 1999, there is a good possibility he would still be working in the education system today, probably promoted to a school-board level administrative position.

Not much has changed in the past decade to catch perverts working at schools. There need to be strict restrictions to having an educator in a closed room with child. If the office or room doesn’t have a window to be visible to other adults, perhaps a second adult must be present, whether a parent or a school employee. Students should also be taught what educators are allowed or not allowed to do to them. There needs to be more open discussion of what is inappropriate touching or punishment.

It’s time parents and the community demanded more clear-cut measures to report incidents. Of course, complaints have to be verified and involve police before anything can be done.

Considering Wadsworth’s ongoing problems with his sexual deviance, it is infuriating to think he almost got away with it.