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HearingsPanels of the Discipline Committee have ordered summaries of recent disciplinary cases to be published in Professionally Speaking. Member: Ronald Wayne Archer A panel of the Discipline Committee held a public hearing February 20, 2006 into allegations of professional misconduct against Ronald Wayne Archer. Archer was certified to teach in 1972 and was employed as a teacher by the Waterloo Region District School Board. The member did not attend the hearing and was not represented by counsel. Archer faced seven allegations of professional misconduct related to his conviction of sexual assault of one of his students. In the absence of the member, the chair of the panel entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf. According to court documents presented to the panel, from a period beginning in March 1993, when the student was 12 years old, until February 1998, Archer committed acts of sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, sexual exploitation and uttering threats against him. Archer was found guilty of all the charges and was sentenced to four years imprisonment. The member appealed the conviction and the sentence, and the Crown attorney appealed the sentence. The Court of Appeal dismissed all appeals. The panel found the member guilty of professional misconduct and ordered that his Certificates of Qualification and Registration be revoked. The decision of the panel appears on the College's public register. Member: Not Identified A panel of the Discipline Committee held a public hearing January 25, 2006 into allegations of professional misconduct against a member employed by a school board. The member attended the hearing and was represented by counsel. The member faced three allegations of professional misconduct related to providing personal information about adult students to a friend. The panel received a memorandum of agreement (MOA) in which the member admitted that during the 2004–05 academic year, he provided, without consent, personal information relating to one or more of his adult students, including names and telephone numbers, to one of his friends, a financial planner. The panel accepted the member's plea and found the member guilty of professional misconduct. Counsel for the member argued against publishing the member's name, pointing out that the member recognized his inappropriate conduct and that he did not benefit from his actions. Member's counsel argued that publication of his client's name would entail a significant penalty, including embarrassment and public ridicule. The College took no position in favour of publication. The panel accepted a joint submission on penalty in which the member agreed to be admonished by the panel. He also agreed that within 90 calendar days, he would successfully complete, at his own expense, a course of instruction on education privacy issues. The panel ordered that he be admonished and that a summary of the decision be published in Professionally Speaking, without the member's name. The decision of the panel appears on the College's public register. Member: George Siakotos A panel of the Discipline Committee held a public hearing on January 16, 2006 into allegations of professional misconduct against George Siakotos. Siakotos was certified to teach in 2000 and was employed as an occasional teacher by the Toronto District School Board. The member attended the hearing and represented himself. Siakotos faced six allegations of professional misconduct related to inappropriate behaviour toward a female student. In April 2004 Siakotos was assigned to work in the library of a Toronto middle school. The College's first witness was a female Grade 12 student who had been assigned to work in the school library on a co-op placement. On her first day, while she was stacking books, Siakotos asked her to sit with him and asked personal questions about whether she had a boyfriend, where she worked and what she did for fun. He also disclosed personal information about himself and asked her not to tell anyone about the conversation. The student said Siakotos asked for her cell phone number, which she gave him. She began to feel uncomfortable at being alone with the member and went to sit at the computer. She testified that Siakotos came up behind her, touched her hair and asked her for a kiss. When the vice-principal entered, she left and reported the incident to her co-op teacher at her school. The school principal at the time told the panel that an internal investigation by the board concluded that Siakotos had acted in an inappropriate manner. He was reprimanded and removed from the occasional teaching list for the rest of the 2003-04 school year. The Toronto police officer who investigated the incident told the panel that the student was a credible witness. He found there were grounds for a charge of common assault but the student did not want to proceed. The officer issued a formal caution to Siakotos. In his testimony, Siakotos said that he had had a normal conversation with the student who gave him the personal information and her cell phone number voluntarily. The member said he told the student it was inappropriate and had taken the phone number as evidence. He said he had followed the student to the computer because he thought she might be viewing inappropriate material and he may have touched her hair by accident. The panel found that the facts supported a finding of professional misconduct. In its written reasons, the panel found that the student was credible in giving her evidence and the other witnesses' evidence supported what she said. The panel said it did not find the evidence provided by Siakotos to be credible. The panel ordered that Siakotos be reprimanded and the fact of the reprimand be recorded on the public register for one year. The member must also complete, at his own expense, a course of instruction on maintaining appropriate boundaries with students and provide evidence of completion to the Registrar. If the member fails to comply with this provision, the panel directed that the Registrar suspend his Certificates of Qualification and Registration for one year. The decision of the panel appears on the College's public register. Member: Stephen James Tonks A panel of the Discipline Committee held a public hearing on February 13, 2006 into allegations of professional misconduct against Stephen James Tonks. Tonks was certified to teach in 1977 and was employed as a teacher by the Upper Grand District School Board. The member did not attend the hearing but was represented by counsel. Stephen Tonks faced seven allegations of professional misconduct related to possession of child pornography. The panel received an agreed statement of facts and guilty plea in which Tonks admitted to the allegations. The panel heard that in 2003, Tonks was in possession in his home of hundreds of graphic electronic images and paper copies of graphic images depicting sexual encounters or sexual activity between children or which involved children, some as young as two or three years of age. Tonks also cut and pasted part of the image of one of his students, taken in class, onto photographs showing adult genitalia. The student was unaware that Tonks had used her image to make pornography. In 2005, Tonks pleaded guilty in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to 12 months to be served conditionally in the community and an additional two-year term of probation. Tonks did not appeal the sentence. The panel ordered that Tonks' Certificates of Qualification and Registration be revoked. The decision of the panel appears on the College's public register. Member: Guy Reginald Wakeford A panel of the Discipline Committee held a public hearing February 6, 2006 into allegations of professional misconduct against Guy Reginald Wakeford. Wakeford was certified to teach in 2000 and was employed as a guidance counsellor by the Eabametoong First Nation Education Authority. The member did not attend the hearing but was represented by counsel. Wakeford faced eight allegations of professional misconduct related to providing false information to an employer regarding his professional qualifications. The panel received an agreed statement of facts, plea of no contest and a joint submission on penalty. The panel heard that in February 2003, Wakeford's principal observed him teaching and later told Wakeford that his rating was “average.” The principal provided Wakeford with a signed blank evaluation form and asked him to complete the teacher's portion and return it to the principal for completion of the rest. Wakeford completed the form, giving himself a uniformly positive evaluation and grading himself as “superior.” He entered typed comments on the form purporting to come from the principal but which did not reflect the oral evaluation. Wakeford did not return the evaluation form to the principal, who left the school the following month. In March 2003, in an effort to gain new employment, Wakeford provided the Neskantaga First Nation Education Authority with the February evaluation. Based in part on the inaccurate and misleading statements in the evaluation, the Neskantaga education authority hired him as a principal. The panel found the member guilty of professional misconduct and ordered that his Certificates of Qualification and Registration be suspended for three months. The decision of the panel appears on the College's public register. Member: Duke Ernest C. Young A panel of the Discipline Committee held a public hearing on February 8, 2006 into allegations of professional misconduct against Duke Ernest C. Young. Young was certified to teach in 1967 and was employed as an elementary teacher by the Toronto District School Board. The member attended the hearing and was represented by counsel. Young faced nine allegations of professional misconduct related to sexual abuse of a student. The panel heard that Young had retired from the board at the end of June 2000. Between February and August 2000, he acted inappropriately towards a 16-year-old former student who was then attending an adjacent school. Young picked her up from her home to attend volleyball practices and games, took her on picnics, communicated with her frequently by telephone, e-mail and instant messaging and fostered a relationship outside the boundaries of a teacher-student relationship. In August 2000, he accompanied the student on a bicycle ride and returned to her home. Shortly after, the student's mother left for work. When the mother returned home unexpectedly, she found Young in her daughter's bedroom engaged in tickling, touching and kissing her. The panel received evidence that in June 2002, Young was found guilty in criminal court of touching a young person for a sexual purpose while in a position of trust and authority. He did not appeal the finding. He was given a suspended sentence and placed on probation for 12 months. Young appealed the sentence but abandoned the appeal. The panel found Young guilty of professional misconduct and ordered that his Certificates of Qualification and Registration be revoked. In its written reasons, the panel noted that Young was well aware of board policies and the professional boundaries that should be maintained between teachers and students. He knew that his behaviour betrayed the trust he had built up with the student and her family over a three-year period. The decision of the panel appears on the College's public register. Glossary of terminologyThe vocabulary used to report disciplinary hearings reflects their quasi-judicial nature. If you wonder what some terms mean, help is at hand. For past and future reference, the College has posted a glossary of terms on its web site. A link to the glossary can be found on the decision-summary page. Visit Glossary of Terms. |
