Windsor teacher gets prison for ‘predatory sexual conduct’

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A former Windsor high school teacher was sentenced Tuesday by two different judges to imprisonment over sexual “luring” of local youths.

One of the judges said Ryan Turgeon’s “predatory sexual conduct” targeting a student demanded a stiff penalty in order to send a stark warning to others in similar positions of authority over children.

The criminal conduct of the former religion and drama teacher “puts the very foundation of our education system at risk,” said Superior Court Justice Brian Dube.

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The judge sentenced Turgeon, now 39, to a penitentiary term of three years, which is the punishment the Crown had requested.

“I think it was a real shock for him,” Turgeon’s lawyer Elizabeth Craig later told reporters. She was acting for him in a separate court matter later that same day.

Citing his lack of a prior criminal record, his otherwise “pro-social” life, family support, as well as the public “notoriety” of the case, defence lawyer Dean Embry had earlier argued for a “reformatory sentence” of 12 to 18 months. That was “far too low,” Justice Dube said Tuesday.

Despite the absence of actual physical contact — although “not for lack of trying” — or any evidence of grooming or threats, the judge said Turgeon’s actions, including sending graphically explicit photos and videos of himself to the student, had “a significant impact” on the victim, who was 16 or 17 at the time of the offences in 2017.

Particularly aggravating, said Dube, was the fact Turgeon sought to exploit a vulnerable teen who had reached out to his favourite teacher, whom he knew was gay, during a period when he was questioning his own sexuality. The trial heard Turgeon offered to provide “experience” to the youth.

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Just hours after Dube’s verdict, and now a convicted felon, Turgeon was brought into another courtroom before another judge to be sentenced on a separate matter involving a different sexual crime. This time, he got an eight-month sentence to be served after his original punishment, and to be followed by three years on probation.

A jury had found the former Catholic Central High School teacher guilty of luring following a trial last April before Justice Dube. Charges related to a second young complainant were tossed out.

Two months later, Turgeon entered a guilty plea before a different judge on another matter, in which he “hooked up” with someone in 2021 on Grindr, an adult “social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people.” The person he had hoped to meet messaged him in advance: “I’m 15 — I hope you’re not mad.”

The encounter didn’t end well for Turgeon. The purported 15-year-old was actually an online adult “vigilante” who video-recorded the rendezvous before contacting Windsor police.

Now with a prior criminal record — from earlier in the morning — Superior Court Justice Pamela Hebner tacked on an eight-month jail sentence and three-year probationary period. She also placed Turgeon on a national sexual offender registry for life; ordered a mandatory DNA sample for a police databank used to help solve crimes; and prohibited Turgeon from visiting playgrounds, swimming pools and anywhere else where children gather for a period of 10 years.

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Turgeon was fired from his Catholic school board teaching job after the original charges were laid by Windsor police in April 2021.

“The message being sent here clearly is that, when a teacher in a position of trust makes any attempt at sexual luring, it is going to be taken incredibly serious (by police and courts),” assistant Crown attorney Jayme Lesperance told reporters after Dube’s verdict.

“It is incredibly important that parents can trust that their children are safe at school,” he said. At a sentencing hearing last fall, Lesperance had described Turgeon’s actions as “truly deplorable.”

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Craig told Hebner her client made “a poor choice, a poor decision,” but was “of otherwise good character.” The author of a pre-sentence report described Turgeon as “very cooperative … appears to be a very pleasant man.”

A “well-educated” man, Craig added, Turgeon was a “grade A student” who was the valedictorian for both his grade school and high school graduating classes.

dschmidt@postmedia.com

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