A former Prince George teacher pleaded guilty Tuesday to gross indecency for maintaining a sexual relationship with a student he coached on the Duchess Park secondary school girls basketball team.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Roderick Lyle Sauve, now 62, carried on the relationship with Sandra Stobbe (nee Boughey), now 43, from September 1981 to June 1985, when she graduated from high school, left Prince George and enrolled in a small college.
Reading a victim impact statement, Stobbe, who waived her right to a court-ordered ban on publication of her name, said Sauve made her responsible for concealing his actions and the pressure to keep the secret safe was intense and continual.
"He made me believe that the only way to prove my love, maturity and specialness to him was to tell no one," Stobbe said. "Telling was not an option and that bad things would happen and he told me it would be my fault."
When she became pregnant at age 16, Sauve urged her to get an abortion, Stobbe told the court, and she complied.
"Mr. Sauve instructed me that I could not have the baby because his wife was pregnant at the same time with their second child," Stobbe said. "I was told to get rid of it and lie about who the father was.
"He said he could not do anything for me and I must make the problem disappear and keep quiet, so I did."
Up until the relationship began when Stobbe was 14 years old, she was a straight A student and then saw her marks drop to a C average and outlined a pattern of self destruction in the years that followed.
She dropped out of three post-secondary programs and has suffered ongoing depression that has required extensive medication and counseling. Stobbe said she never enjoyed the sex with Sauve but it was rather a physical test to be endured to keep him loving her.
"At 14, I want to be accepted by him and it was the only way to be accepted," Stobbe said and added she learned to use sex as a weapon. Unaware of sexual intimacy, Stobbe said she has become physically ill during encounters later in life.
"My body floods with unpleasant memories and I have had to train myself to trigger back to thoughts of now and not then," Stobbe said, "to remember that the love I share with my husband is real."
Stobbe said she missed out on normal teen life such as "Hanging out with friends, young, innocent crushes, parties on the weekend and prom."
"These were things I gave up willingly at the time in order to please Mr. Sauve, but hindsight is 20-20 - I would rather be at a grad reunion than standing her in front of you," Stobbe told Provincial Court Judge Michael Brecknell while giving her statement.
Asked to give his own statement, Sauve, who was in his 30s at the time of the encounters and moved to Victoria in June 1986 where he continued to teach, said he was "terribly sorry" for what he had done.
Gross indecency implies Sauve's relationship with Stobbe was consensual but a marked departure from the conduct expected of an average Canadian in the circumstances of the offence at the time.
In a joint submission, Crown and defence counsel are seeking a conditional sentence - effectively house arrest - of eight to nine months for Sauve. Brecknell reserved his decision to a later date.
Lawyers referenced the 2006 case of Lower Mainland teacher Tom Ellison, who was sentenced to a two-year conditional sentence on seven charges for sex offences in the 1970s and 1980s when he was headmaster of the Quest outdoor education program at Prince of Wales secondary school.
The convictions were for two counts of indecent assault, two of gross indecency and one of common assault.
