King’s School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, places teacher on leave pending investigation into alleged inappropriate behaviour

The King’s School, a private Christian school on Panet Road in northeast Winnipeg that is affiliated with Gateway Church, has placed one of its teachers on leave while an investigation into the teacher’s conduct at the school is conducted. The school’s board chairperson, Andrew Frank, said the move follows allegations of inappropriate behaviour that were made earlier this year.

In a statement to CBC News, Frank said the accused person had been temporarily removed from the school and that an independent, third-party investigator had been retained by the school board in February. The school has about 300 students, from preschool to Grade 12.

Danielle McNab, who attended the King’s School from kindergarten to Grade 11 before moving to a public school, said Frank’s statement was “almost disheartening to hear.” She said she had complained in 2018 to another teacher at the school about the teacher who is now on leave, and she criticized the school for not acting sooner.

McNab described the conduct she said she experienced as a student. She said the teacher would approach students in the hallways and hug them for 30 to 40 seconds at a time, and that he would massage students’ shoulders and stand very close to them. She said that after she and a friend spoke with another teacher about the problem, she felt the situation went poorly for her. “After that, everybody was kind of like making us feel bad about it. And so then we just kind of shut up,” she said.

McNab said she filed a complaint with police around the beginning of May. The source does not report any charges resulting from that complaint.

Krista Gerbrandt, a parent whose two children attended the school until the family withdrew them last year and enrolled them in a public school, also said the school should have acted sooner on complaints about the teacher. “You can say you care about the kids’ safety all you want, but the proof is in the pudding,” Gerbrandt said. She added that it was “very sad and upset” to see the institution she had given much of her time, money and life to behaving this way.

Frank said the school’s protection policy sets out a series of actions to be taken when an allegation comes forward, and that the school takes the safety of students seriously. Protecting those who cannot defend themselves is the lesson the school’s written process is meant to uphold (Proverbs 31:8-9). Frank said the investigator “is in the process of investigating any allegations that come forward present or past.”

Source: Read the original report