TORONTO – For the second time in a week, a Toronto high school will provide counselling for staff and students Monday after a popular teacher facing recent charges of inappropriate sexual contact with two boys threw himself under a subway train over the weekend – an incident a school trustee called “tragic from every angle.”
David Dewees, a Grade 10 instructor at Jarvis Collegiate in Toronto, was charged Thursday with two counts each of invitation to sexual touching and luring stemming from incidents that police allege took place at a Christian summer camp in the Muskoka area of Ontario where he volunteered during summers.
Early Saturday morning, Dewees, 32, jumped from the platform at High Park Station as a Toronto Transit Commission subway train entered.
Toronto District School Board trustee Sheila Ward said that counsellors were on hand at the school Friday as news of the arrest “blindsided” the shocked Jarvis Collegiate community. Due to the nature of the charges, he had been immediately put on leave from his teaching job with pay, pending the outcome of the criminal proceedings.
Grief counselling was provided Sunday for anyone who had learned of Dewees’s apparent suicide, but the Ward 14 trustee said she expected some staff and students may only learn of the event when they report to class Monday morning.
“I think it will be very hard for the kids who knew him and liked him and trusted him as a really excellent teacher. It’s going to be a loss and a really hard one to wrap their heads around,” said Ward. “I think it’s tragic for any young boys who may have been involved with David inappropriately. I think his death is a tragedy. . . . It’s just a tragic thing all around.”
Toronto police said in a statement he had befriended two boys while working at the Ontario Pioneer Camp, located near Port Sydney, Ont., and alleged he later had inappropriate contact with them via the Internet.
“Mr. Dewees has the capacity in his employment and his volunteer activities to have contact with children as a person of trust or authority,” said Det. Bill McGarry of the Toronto Police Service said prior to the death. “We want to reach out to any potential victims who have yet to come forward.”
The incidents in which Dewees stood charged allegedly occurred between 2008 and 2009.
Dewees had taught at Jarvis Collegiate since 2003 and volunteered at the Pioneer Camp in Muskoka between 1997 and 2009.
The alleged offences came to their attention in August when the victims came forward.
“We take this very seriously,” said Gerry Rodman, President of Inter-Varsity Fellowship, told Canwest News Service earlier this week. “Dave Dewees had a fresh police check, and a fresh interview with references. We believe we’ve done the right thing with this case.”
Ward said his colleagues and pupils at Jarvis Collegiate were surprised to learn of his arrest and subsequent suspension.
“It came out of the blue for everybody,” she said. “Nobody had any clue about it. A really fine teacher was charged with something that they had no knowledge about. It will be a really different circumstance (Monday) when they have to deal with the fact he died.”
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