Canada's highest court has overturned lower court decisions and ruled that a former London teacher who used a camera pen to take videos of female students without their knowledge is guilty of voyeurism.
The Supreme Court of Canada issued its decision Thursday morning in the case of Ryan Jarvis, a former teacher at Beal Secondary School, who was charged with voyeurism in June of 2011 after another teacher repeatedly saw Jarvis making video recordings with the pen camera and reported it to the school’s principal, who then contacted the police. The videos were taken secretly between 2010-2011, and some focused on the breasts and cleavage area of a number of female students who ranged in age between 14 and 18 years old. The recordings, which included audio, were taken in various areas around the school while Jarvis was conversing with the students. The videos ranged in duration from six seconds to just over two-and-a-half minutes.
In November 2015, Superior Court Justice Andrew Goodman found Jarvis not guilty of voyeurism, and ruled that while the students had a reasonable expectation of privacy, he wasn't convinced the videos were sexually motivated. In his decision, Goodman stated that while the recordings were most likely made for a sexual purpose, “there may be other inferences to be drawn.”
In October of 2017, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the acquittal, dismissing an appeal by the Crown. While the Court of Appeal believed the videos were made for a sexual purpose, it disagreed with the original decision regarding the students' expectation of privacy, given the public setting of a school.
But in Thursday's 99-page ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned that decision and ordered that a conviction be entered into the record and that Jarvis be sentenced. It ruled that the students did have a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to being the subjects of videos of this nature.
"In this case, when the entire context is considered, there can be no doubt that the students' circumstances give rise to a reasonable expectation that they would not be recorded in the manner they were. In particular, the subjects of the video recordings were teenage students at a high school. They were recorded by their teacher in breach of the relationship of trust that exists between teachers and students as well as in contravention of a formal school board policy that prohibited such recording. Significantly, the videos had as their predominant focus the bodies of students, particularly their breasts. In recording these videos, the accused acted contrary to the reasonable expectations of privacy that would be held by persons in the circumstances of the students when they were recorded," the ruling said.
The entire ruling can be read by clicking here.
-With files from Kirk Dickinson