BURST
A B.C. teacher has lost his teaching certificate after being charged with sexual assault, while another was suspended for an inappropriate relationship with a student.
The two cases are detailed in a pair of consent resolution agreements posted by the B.C. Teacher Regulation Branch this week.
In the first case , Shay Bernard Crawford, a teacher in the Southeast Kootenay region, lost his certificate after being charged with sexual assault in November 2021.
He notified the teacher regulation branch the month after the charge was announced but “did not provide further information about the charge” and was suspended from teaching while the case played out in courts.
In August 2022, Crawford was convicted of one count of sexual assault and in May 2023, he was sentenced to two years less a day and 12 months of probation. A later appeal was unsuccessful.
Following his sentencing, Crawford’s teaching certificate was cancelled and he agreed not to reapply for the next decade.
The consent agreement also detailed how a trial judge found that Crawford’s “moral culpability and blameworthiness are indeed high,” and that he was “not genuinely remorseful,” and that he continued to blame the victim for this offence.
“Crawford is presently not a person of good moral character and otherwise fit and proper to work as a teacher in a position of trust and authority,” read the agreement signed last month.
In the second case , Vancouver Island teacher Eric Joseph Bernard Enreight Blouin was issued a suspension for an inappropriate joke made while teaching, and an inappropriate relationship with a student.
In June 2022, Blouin was teaching French 8 when he had the students practice counting aloud from 1 to 100. Following each set of 10 numbers, Blouin would prompt the next set of numbers by asking “what’s next?”
When the students counted 69, Blouin said “what’s next” followed by “mouthwash.” Blouin told officials he had intended this comment to an education assistant but that it was overheard by students.
He was verbally reprimanded as a result.
In August 2022, another teacher and the school district reported Blouin to the teacher regulation branch after it was found he had “failed to maintain appropriate professional boundaries” with a student.
According to the consent resolution agreement, Blouin acknowledged he had exchanged personal text messages with a student, communication that started during the school year and continued into the summer.
“On two occasions in the summer, Blouin invited the student into his home. He served the student food and hugged the student at the end of each visit,” read the agreement. “On one of these visits, Blouin sat very close to the student.”
Blouin texted the student a few more times over the summer before the student asked Blouin to cut contact in late August. He later texted the student a few more times in the fall of 2022 before all communication ceased.
In October 2022, Blouin was disciplined by the district, issued a seven-day suspension without pay, and ordered to complete boundaries training. Blouin was later also handed a three-week suspension of his teaching certificate.