Educational assistant jailed for having sex with student

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This article was published 19/06/2018 (2137 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former educational assistant has been sentenced to 31/2 years in prison for sexually exploiting a teenage student she was supposed to supervise.

Sheryl Dyck, 45, was taken into custody Wednesday morning, after Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Richard Saull imposed the sentence. Dyck should feel fortunate it wasn’t higher, he said.

“She groomed him for her own sexual satisfaction,” Saull said, emphasizing Dyck used marijuana and cocaine with the teen, supplied him with alcohol, and let him drive her car even though he didn’t have a driver’s licence, during their inappropriate relationship.

When he convicted Dyck on one count of sexual exploitation last year, Saull decided her relationship with the 16-year-old was a serious breach of trust because of Dyck’s job at Elmwood High School in Winnipeg. Over the course of seven months in 2014, they smoked marijuana together about 100 times, had oral sex in public places about 15 times, and had sexual intercourse on the teen’s 17th birthday.

During Dyck’s trial last year, the teen said he believed the sex was consensual, even though he couldn’t legally consent because he was underage. Speaking in court June 15, the teen said he initially didn’t understand that he was a victim but has experienced “ripple effects” since the trial. He can’t be named because of a court-ordered publication ban.

Dyck has done “nothing short of bad-mouth the complainant,” Saull said. During her trial, she testified the young man was making up the allegations because he and his family are “ruthless people” with gang affiliations.

“It seems that she’s, in effect, standing on the edge of a cliff. She doesn’t seem to want to make the hop, skip into reality regarding her involvement in this crime. She’s still in denial and has very little, if any, empathy for the complainant,” Saull said.

At her sentencing hearing last week, Dyck said she wished the young man well. Her statement then, and the way she testified during her trial, convinced Saull that Dyck was not as “unsophisticated” as her defence lawyers argued when they asked for a sentence in the range of 18 months in jail. The Crown was seeking a five-year prison sentence.

Saull refused to declare the mandatory minimum one-year sentence for sexual exploitation unconstitutional, rejecting the defence’s request to strike it down in this case. On Wednesday, he said a four- or five-year sentence would be appropriate, but he said he was “understanding” of Dyck’s obligations to care for her son, who has special needs.

Dyck will also have to register as a sex offender for 20 years. She was suspended from her job at Elmwood High School in the fall of 2014, after the victim’s mother found out about the relationship and complained to the school.

“She was a good EA. She was helping me with my schoolwork at Elmwood High School… but we were also smoking weed, drinking, having sexual intercourse.”

Even after she was suspended, Dyck continued to see the teen. Video surveillance footage showed them together at a Main Street Liquor Mart during school hours, about two weeks after Dyck was suspended.

The teen testified he initially didn’t want to give a statement to police about what happened to him.

“I wasn’t trying to get anybody to lose their job at all,” he said in court last year. “She was a good EA. She was helping me with my schoolwork at Elmwood High School… but we were also smoking weed, drinking, having sexual intercourse.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @thatkatiemay