Port Hope Grade 8 teacher facing sexual assault, related charges
CBC
A Grade 8 teacher employed at a Catholic school in Port Hope, Ont., is facing 18 charges for sex-related offences she allegedly committed against current and former students, police say.
The Port Hope Police Service said this week the 40-year-old teacher at St. Anthony Catholic Elementary School was first arrested in late August after an investigation into an alleged sexual assault involving a youth victim who was a current student at the school.
Kelly-Anne Jennings was initially charged with sexual assault and sexual interference in connection with that incident, police said in a news release Tuesday. Jennings is a certified teacher with the Ontario College of Teachers.
Insp. Katie Andrews, of the Port Hope Police Service, said in an interview from Cobourg that the first alleged victim told his mother that there was allegedly touching with a teacher on a class trip. The mother told police during the week of Aug. 21.
The Ontario Provincial Police investigated first because the class trip was outside of Port Hope, but Port Hope police later took over the investigation.
Andrews said the investigation widened after that. Investigators started to interview witnesses whose names were given as part of the original statement. Students and teachers were interviewed, she added. Other alleged victims came forward.
Further investigation identified three additional alleged victims who were previously students at the same school, according to police.
With assistance from Peterborough police's technological crimes unit, police in Port Hope carried out several search warrants related to the ongoing investigation, and as a result, Jennings was re-arrested on Sept. 4.
She was charged with 16 additional offences, including:
The charges have not yet been tested in court.
Jennings was held for a bail hearing at the Ontario Court of Justice in Cobourg on Thursday.
She was released with surety and with several conditions, including no contact with 14 individuals, not possessing a cell phone, pager or personal digital assistant, and not being allowed to be in the company of or communicate with males or females under 16 years of age unless a surety is present or unless the children are her biological children.
She is expected to appear in court in October.
Police urged anyone who believes they were a victim of the teacher, or anyone with information that could help investigators, to come forward.
