A former eighth-grade teacher who gave children sexual photos received a four-year term.
After convincing kids to trade explicit selfies with her, a former Grade 8 teacher in Ontario entered a guilty plea to sex offenses and was given a four-year jail sentence.
Kelly-Anne Jennings, 41, was present in a Kawartha Lakes, Ontario, courtroom on Thursday when the judge handed down the punishment.
Justice Nathan N. Baker of the Ontario Court stated, “The consequences of having a child engage in sexual acts on camera for the satisfaction of an adult are severe.”
Earlier this month, Jennings entered a guilty plea to six charges involving three boys, including child luring, invitation to sexual contact, and creation of child sexual abuse and exploitation material, which was previously known as child pornography under the Criminal Code. A fourth complainant was charged with additional offenses, such as sexual assault and sexual interference.
After Baker read his decision, two officers took Jennings into custody and led her out of the courtroom. Her name will be added to the national sex offender registry, and she was ordered to provide a DNA sample.
The mother of one of the victims recently told the court “people don’t want to believe women can do this.”
“But this wasn’t a mistake,” she wrote in a victim impact statement. “This was abuse. It was calculated. It was predatory. It was criminal.”
When the allegations against Jennings first surfaced last year, she was placed on unpaid leave from her job in Port Hope, Ont., about 100 kilometres east of Toronto.
The Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board said it formally “terminated Ms. Jennings’ employment,” earlier this month.
“I want to acknowledge the profound and ongoing impact this case has had on our school communities,” the board’s director of education, Stephen O’Sullivan, said in a statement emailed to CBC News. “My hope is that today’s outcome provides some measure of closure for those affected.”
A publication ban covers the names of the three teenage victims. The court order also prevents other information from being shared that could identify the students, such as the name of the publicly funded school where Jennings taught.
According to an agreed statement of facts filed in court, Jennings began sending suggestive pictures and videos to the three former students over Snapchat in the summer of 2023, when the boys were 14 or 15 years old.
The images grew increasingly explicit, with Jennings sharing a picture of herself in a bathtub, then fully nude images and ultimately a video of herself masturbating.