The messages came in from her high school teacher, sometimes until 2 a.m.“I want to see you naked,” one read. “Please don’t leave me.” “If I lose you, I’ll die.” The teacher was Richard S. Buckley, and he taught the girl in Ontario’s Bluewater District School Board, south of Owen Sound. When her vice-principal was tipped off and began to investigate what was going on in the spring of 2014, Buckley contacted the girl in a panic. He was going to kill himself, he told her, according to an agreed statement of facts in his case. He pleaded with her not to tell administrators what happened between them. Though Buckley later pleaded guilty to psychological and sexual abuse of his student in a November 2016 disciplinary hearing at the Ontario College of Teachers, his teaching licence was not revoked. Ontario law doesn’t require teachers who have committed certain kinds of sexual abuse to lose their licences. Under new legislation in 2016, if a teacher engages in intercourse, masturbation, child pornography, or any of the following contacts — genital-to-genital, genital-to-oral, anal-to-genital, and oral-to-anal — their licence must be revoked. But if a teacher gropes a student, touches them in other sexual ways, or makes sexual comments towards a student, their license isn’t automatically revoked. Those decisions are made case-by-case at the discretion of the college. “We should (never have) folks continue teaching when they cross those lines, when they engage in any form of sexual violence or abuse of youth,” said Lenore Lukasik, chair of the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres. “I think it’s absolutely OK for us to draw that line.”Bill 37, the Protecting Students Act, was implemented in 2016. The bill was criticized at the time by the college for not being tough enough. An ongoing Star investigation has found that Bill 37 is part of a system that doesn̵ ...
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