A teacher convicted of child pornography charges after secretly filming women naked, including a 16-year-old, in a London elementary school change room is now banned from teaching in Ontario.
On Thursday, Jamie Gardiner had his certificate of qualification and registration revoked by the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) after he was found guilty of making and possessing child pornography, and pleaded guilty to 16 counts of voyeurism, back in May and June of 2017. He will also receive a reprimand, but the OCT has not stated what that will be.
Gardiner, who was a special education teacher at Ashley Oaks Public School, admitted to placing a backpack with a thumb-sized hole and a camera lens through the hole in a staff change room from 2011 until March 2015, after he was caught by a colleague. The backpack was left on the floor of the change room, angled to capture the genital or buttock area of female co-workers as they changed. Among those secretly filmed on Gardiner’s hidden camera was a 16-year-old co-op student assigned to his class.
He was sentenced in October 2017 to one year in jail for making child pornography and nine months for voyeurism offences. The sentences were to run concurrently. Gardiner was given two-years probation and was ordered to continue counselling for sexual deviancy and sex addiction.
-With files from Miranda Chant
