A criminal who does the right thing, finally.

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Sorry, my ability to put a link up is limited by my low intelligence. However, this article about an Alberta pedophile (who shares my profession to boot) cheered me up in that there will be no media circus and he'll never, ever touch a little girl again.

The Article (Edmonton Sun, 20/12/05):
A Spruce Grove gym teacher accused of sexually assaulting two female students and shooting nude videos of one of them took his own life late Sunday night.

Steven Bradley Smith, 31, was found hanging by paramedics who were called to his home at 19035 46 Ave. in Edmonton before midnight.

The medical examiner's office confirmed the suicide of Smith, who was on leave from his position at Woodhaven Middle School as the police investigation continued.

The mother of one of the alleged victims, who turned 15 yesterday, said she and her family are anything but pleased by the shocking news.

"My daughter is definitely devastated. This isn't somebody she disliked," the mother said. "I would never have wanted to see this happen. It's a nightmare.


"It doesn't make it any better, that's for sure. There's no answers."

The mother added she hoped Smith left a suicide note or some other explanation for what happened.

Smith was found dead the night before lawyers for local media outlets were to ask a judge in Stony Plain court to unseal affidavits used to secure search warrants in the case, said Smith's lawyer Dino McLaughlin.

"Obviously this is not a happy outcome," said McLaughlin.

Those court records will be unsealed this morning, according to Alberta Justice.

The charges against Smith, laid by Spruce Grove RCMP last month, include sexual assault, sexual interference, inviting sexual touching and sexual exploitation involving the two girls.

Smith was also charged with making child pornography and shooting digital video footage of one of the girls while she was nude, as well as having anal intercourse with her.

Police alleged the incidents took place between Sept. 1, 2003, and Oct. 30, 2005, and said both girls were under 14 when the alleged assaults began.

Yesterday afternoon, Parkland School Division board chair Grace Gruber told media assembled at division headquarters that the board was "saddened" to announce the "sudden death" of Smith.

Reading from a prepared statement, Gruber said crisis response teams had been brought into Woodhaven school to help students deal with the news. She didn't take questions from reporters.

In a note sent home with students, the Parkland School Division said no funeral arrangements had yet been made.

No one answered the door at Smith's home last night.

 

There are very few cases where I would actually qualify suicide as the right thing and this one ain't one of those cases.

 

LKD, from previous postings, I know that you mean that both you and he are in the teaching profession, but reading the sentence literally implies that both you and he are pedophiles.

 

Erm, so she liked the stuff he did to her?

 

While I'm not exactly mourning that a pedophile is dead, I really don't agree with saying that a criminal who commited suicide "did the right thing." It sounds like there's a public pressure for criminals to kill themselves, and that doing it somehow exonerates them - classic eye-for-an-eye mentality. The image it conjures in my head is locking up someone with a loaded gun and telling them, "Do the right thing."

 

Hmm... you have a point there and I think I missed that. Yes, suicide is not right on its own and it doesn't make people blameless for what they did. In some cultures, it has been regarded as the honourable solution, but isn't it just a way of escaping shame?

 

Well, I suppose it could have been consensual. I mean, we had that issue with a 20-year old marrying a 13-year old. The question again becomes, if it's consensual, should we even prosecute? According to the letter of the law, we have to charge this guy, but I still feel that if a person is old enough to have sex (and 13-years old usually is old enough) then that person should also be able to consent to sex.

On the other hand, we also have the issue of child pornography, which goes beyond a consent issue. What I do not know is how the law differs (as I assume it does) if this guy took the video of her naked for his personal use, or if he took it with the idea of selling it or posting it on the Internet. I would imagine that trying to make money from it is a graver offense than keeping it for yourself.

 

Beren,

Agreed. I was only building off of Chev's statement that the girl stated "This wasn't someone I disliked." I was merely suggesting that even if her consent was coerced as he is in an authoritative position to her, there is no way he could have coerced her to say she didn't dislike him. Granted, I am basing this on one statement, but from the context it is written in, it gives the impression that it could have been consensual, because if it wasn't, or if it was coerced, I'd imagine she would dislike this man. Sure, maybe she didn't want him to kill himself, but I think "dislike" would be a completely defensible position. Despite this, she said she "didn't dislike" him.

 

what are the evidence against this guy? From what I've read in your post he's merely being accused for having done these things to the two girls, but it doesn't specify whether the girls simply had accused him of doing this or that to them, or whether they have hard core evidence in form of either the videos referred to, or some such similar form of evidence...

In Denmark we've had quite some cases of accused pedophiles (who may or may not have been guilty - I do not know) who committed suicide because they could not live with the shame or whatnots.

Is there a chance that he killed himself because of a similar reason, as the one I explained above, or am I missing something

From a personal point of view I'd say no; definitely! But that's just me not being able to pass on knowing that the world will remember me as such a person. I think that would be even more shameful.

Do you really believe that a 13-year old would be able to fully judge the consequences that sexual intercourse may just bring along? I'm not talking about having children (obviously, if he only did anal penetration that won't be a problem at all) but rather the psychological consequences... Surely this whole situation must have left heavy marks on these girls minds and souls.
Furthermore we would anyway end up having to decide WHEN sexual intercourse is consensual, and when it is not. A lot of these guys are good at "charming" their way into the hearts of their victims. And seeing as we here talk about a 13-year old, early in her puppetry, I could easily imagine that he could "sweet talk" her into a form of... well... love? We've heard about such scenarios before.

 

It surely is a possibility, but then why did the girl say "This isn't someone I disliked"?

We are doing that already. This man's actions were wrong reagardless of any mitigating factors because the girl he did this with was a student. Due to his clear position of authority, it is indefensible. However, he would be judged very differently if this girl was say, 16, and wasn't one of his students. The child pornography charge would still apply, but all of the other actions (in most countries at least) could be considered consensual.

 

Doing sexy things with a 13 year old isn't really healthy. I mean, if you're a 20 year old guy and she looks (and talks and behaves etc) older than her age, then maybe. But a teacher and a student so young? Even if there was consent, the whole situation was sick. Come on, nude videos? And how would they know of them if the videos hadn't been circulated anyhow?

This is not to say a healthy guy won't be attracted to shapely teenagers or anything, but there's a fine line between noticing she's going to be a good catch when she grows up and actually wanting sex with her. You don't normally even dance or chit-chat with such an age difference. They call you sir and you call them children.

On the other hand, "this isn't someone she disliked" may suggest the parents weren't convinced of the teacher's guilt. In fact, Olimikrig brings up a very important point: the shame may have become unbearable and the man unable to cope with it. Would a real paedophile kill himself or would he rather be defiant and resort to all sorts of bizarre arguments in trying to present his behaviour as normal and healthy?

At any rate, there's much more to this case than we are told.

 

Nice to know that I can still stir up trouble every once in a while.

Aldeth, I'll state it clearly -- my profession is Teacher. Not Pedophile. Hope that clears it all up

Around here, if a high school teacher were to have sex with (or even date) an 18 year old who was his student, he would almost certainly be fired, her age notwithstanding. He would have "brought the profession into shame" or something similar, and criminal or not, the Teacher's code of conduct would have been violated and he'd be out of a job.

 

LDK - I knew you weren't a pedophile - I just was humored by your exact chioce of phrasing the intial post.

I agree that any type of romantic involvement is inappropriate whenever you are dealing with a teacher-student relationship, regardless of the age differential.

When I was a graduate student in college, I taught undergraduate labs, and there was a very attractive woman in one of my classes that was interested in me. Even though in our case the difference was only a few years (she was 19 and I was 24) there was no way I was going to go anywhere near that (although I must shamefully admit that I wanted to, and thought about it before deciding against it). There was nothing in the teacher's handbook that expressly stated you could not fraternize with students, and since we were both over 18, it would have been completely legal.

Still, it does not give the impression of a good relationship, and it probably would have been frowned upon by the other instructors and other students. The problems I think are twofold. For one, you are certainly jeopardizing your subjectivity as an instructor. Even if you manage to still grade the student as you would any other, there will be those that argue that you're grading her differently (and imply giving her higher grades than she earned) because of the romatic involvment. And it would be difficult to remove that impression even if you were able to provide all the test scores and show the grading was fair. Secondly, there's no way for the instructor to know if she is genuinely interested in you, or is only looking for a better grade. Regardless, I didn't do anything at the time, and didn't even attempt to date her afterwards, in case people thought there was some level of impropiety after the fact.

What I'm getting at is the teacher never should have done this, and regardless of what the girls involved thought of him, and regardless of what they consented to, it is irrelevant. It is also irrelevant in terms of the child pornography charges. I would think that at least that part of the story has to be true. How could they charge him of having naked videos of the girl in question unless they found such evidence in his house? Proving child molestation without evidence might have been difficult, but proving child pornography when you have the tape would have been automatic. In fact, if the video shows him engaging in sexual acts with her, the child molestation charge would be automatic too.

All that I'm arguing with is whether or not the age of consent (16 in most states) is fair. Like I said, this was student-teacher, so it's wrong on many levels, but IMO, old enough for sex should be old enough to consent to sex. In fact, if you look at it objectively, it is a suprisingly logical parameter.

 

@Aldeth: What if the difference is none or when the student is actually older? I remember a situation when I was teaching a class and I was the youngest person in the room. Not like there was any personal involvement there.

I generally think school isn't a place for romance and people romantically involved with each other shouldn't really be in a position to give or receive grades, promotions, bonuses etc. However, there are types of student-teacher relationships in which it isn't as troublesome as elsewhere.

 

It's still not good because of the perception (regardless of whether or not it's rooted in reality) of preferential treatment. My personal example was meant to illustrate that. While I was older than the student, it was meant to represent a situation where there were two consenting adults. In all the other examples that have been posted, one of the participants was an adult, while the other was still a minor. Granted, I will still admit that there is a definite difference in maturity between someone who is 19 and one who is 24.

 

How does one make child pornography without consent? If he was filming, and they didn't want to, they could have ran off... it begs the question of consent. Of course, it doesn't matter: the law (which is most certainly a just law) says you can't have sex until you are 16 or older.

By killing himself, however, he is proving his guilt - if he was innocent, or felt that he did nothing wrong, wouldn't he try to prove it?

[ December 22, 2005, 09:02: Message edited by: Saber ]

 

Maybe the pressure to admit guilt despite being innocent. Or the burden of misguided accusation. Or something like that. But it's hardly believable that he could possibly be innocent here. But still, what the mother said confuses me.

 

It's just a matter of a confused teenager. Likely the poor girl just doesn't think the coach did anything wrong, probably as a result of the assurances he had to make to get her to do it in the first place. It's sad to see someone affected so much by an experience, and I hope she'll eventually come to terms with what he did.

 

@ Aldeth

It would seem that I somewhat misunderstood a few of your arguments.

That's a bold statement. One could just as easily say that he's innocent based on the same argument.

What if he tied the victim? There's also been loads of cases wherein the molester would have gradually destroyed his victims self esteem and self control; the victim has become a subject to the will of the molester...

Why couldn't he? Just today I was charged for being in possession of illegal drugs, simply because I passed through an area wherein the police was at the moment doing a razzia in an alleged "hasch club". This did not mean that I had done anything, and the charges was dropped when the police found no evidence. There *has* been known cases of girls (and boys) accusing teachers and their ilk of having done bad things (in lack of better word) to them. That would also lead to a charge based on those accounts, wouldn't it?

Do not get me wrong here. I'm not trying to prove this man's innocent; but neither am I trying to disprove it. I'm merely pointing out there has been known accounts of falsely accused pedophiles who used suicide as a way out of the hell that he, unlike if he *was* a pedophile, has been put in.

Concerning Teachers having a romantic relationship with their students, I do not think such things have any place in schools. They should always keep a professional distance to the kids (or adults) they are teaching.