By Kayla Haggett [1]
BELLEVILLE – Court documents released Tuesday shed light on the details of a local teacher’s sexual interactions with minors, including some former students.
The documents were read out by the Crown during 37-year-old Jaclyn McLaren’s court appearance [2] on Tuesday, where she pleaded guilty to seven charges of sexual offences involving eight youths. McLaren will be sentenced on May 19.
Shielding her face from cameras with an umbrella, teacher Jaclyn McLaren enters the Quinte Courthouse Tuesday to plead guilty to the charges against her. Photo by Jenna Leslie, QNet News
After McLaren entered her guilty pleas before Judge Stephen Hunter, assistant Crown attorney Lynn Ross read to the court a three-page statement of facts. It revealed a series of interactions involving explicit photos and videos sent via Snapchat, and meetings in which McLaren drank alcohol with the boys and had sexual encounters with them. Most of the incidents took place during the period between 2011 and 2015, when McLaren was teaching at Tweed Elementary School.
It began with a Grade 8 French class, when she gave students her cellphone for class purposes, according to Ross. A male pupil searched through her photos and saw an explicit photo of McLaren, which he showed to two of his classmates.
McLaren kept the three of them in for recess and asked them not to tell about the photo. However, one of the students demanded explicit photos in return for his silence, and she complied.
This was the beginning of years of exchanged explicit photos between McLaren and boys under 18; between 2013 and 2016 she communicated via Snapchat with eight boys, six of whom were her former students, the statement of facts reveals.
Her actions came despite her being advised in the fall of 2013 by her union steward and the school’s principal to stop being friends with students on Facebook because of adult content on her Facebook page.
One of the boys began receiving explicit photos from McLaren in 2014, and it continued until 2016, when he disclosed them to his parents. This same victim, along with another who exchanged explicit Snapchat photos with McLaren, at one point met up with her on the Trans Canada Trail in Tweed. She had bought beer, and drank it with the boys before engaging in kissing and fondling them in her vehicle. She then suggested they return to the trail, and there performed oral sex on both of them.
This was the first sexual experience for both boys, according to the statement of facts.
It also noted that there was a discrepancy in the date of this incident, with the boys reporting that it took place in October 2014 and McLaren saying it was November 2015. “Although the Crown believes the boys to be accurate about the date … it has chosen not to prove the date beyond a reasonable doubt, as that would necessitate the boys having to testify,” it said.
In the fall of 2015, the statement continues, McLaren met up with the same two boys individually and performed oral sex on them again – one on the same trail and another in the back of her vehicle.
Pieter Kort, McLaren’s defence lawyer, told the court that she claims the sexual interactions with the two boys did not happen until they were 15.
A third victim began exchanging explicit Snapchat photos and videos from McLaren in October 2013, when he was 15. McLaren told the victim that she was concerned she would lose her job if he told anyone about their relationship, the statement of facts said. The two had full sexual intercourse at McLaren’s home just after this victim turned 18, the court heard.
Another five victims, aged 14 to 17 at the time of the offences, received explicit Snapchat photos and videos from McLaren. She has claimed she didn’t know that two of the boys were underage, though she has admitted she didn’t take the necessary steps to learn their ages, the statements of facts said.
Under Canadian law, the age of consent for sexual activity [3] is 16, but it is 18 in cases where the activity exploits the younger person because the partner is in a position of trust or authority – like that of a teacher.
The investigation into McLaren began in February 2016, when the parents of one of the victims involved in the incidents on the trail found suspicious texts on their son’s phone. They began to question his relationship with his former teacher, and contacted the parents of another victim. Both boys ended up telling their parents about their sexual relations with McLaren.
The families went to the Central Hastings OPP that same day, Feb. 14, and McLaren was arrested the next day.
Over the next few days, more victims were identified, bringing the total to eight. All were under the age of 18 at the time of the offences, and four were under the age of 16. Six of the eight were former students of McLaren.
She pleaded guilty on Tuesday to:
- Two counts of sexual exploitation
- Two counts of luring a child
- One count of possessing child pornography
- One count of sexual interference
- One count of making sexually explicit material available to a child.
Flanked by two or three supporters and her lawyer, and hiding her face with an umbrella, McLaren walked into the Quinte Courthouse a bit before 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. When she appeared before Hunter in Room 204 shortly after 12:15 p.m., her eyes were red and puffy but she spoke in a steady voice as she entered her guilty plea.
It was all over in about 25 minutes, after which McLaren hugged the people who had come with her. After speaking with a court official for about half an hour, she and her supporters walked out of the courthouse, McLaren again shielding her face, and got into an SUV parked across the street.
As reporters and videographers followed her, she could be heard to say to them, “You are parasites.”
In a media scrum outside the courtroom, Ross said that though the Crown and the defence have an idea of what they want McLaren’s sentence to be, she wanted to wait to comment on sentencing. She intends to be guided by the recommendations of a psychologist and sex-offender expert who will comment on programming available for sexual offenders in the provincial and federal jail system, she said.
Defence lawyer Kort confirmed that there’s no question McLaren will go to jail.
The May 19 sentencing will take place at the Quinte Courthouse at 9:30 a.m.