Iqaluit education authority to plan policy on alleged sex abuse in city schools

The Iqaluit District Education Authority plans to work on a policy to deal with alleged sex abuse in its six schools.

The name of Mark Caine, a Grade 7 teacher at Aqsarniit Middle School in Iqaluit, appears on a Nunavut Court of Justice docket distributed April 9, which lists three charges of sexual interference by his name.

Caine is set to appear in court April 12.

The RCMP has refused to release the name of the teacher or name Aqsarniit Middle School as the place where Caine taught up until his arrest.

So, “the DEA only knows what’s been released from the RCMP,” Iqaluit DEA spokesperson Sabrina Sherman said April 8.

But the recent arrest of the Iqaluit teacher has still raised concerns among the DEA members and parents in Iqaluit.

During a three-hour meeting held April 7, members of the Iqaluit DEA said they wanted to know what to do when an alleged case of child sex abuse arises in a school, and what to tell worried parents who call DEA board members.

In an in-camera session, the Iqaluit DEA members asked Sherman to work on developing a policy for the DEA, which its members can call on when child sex abuse charges do arise in any of Iqaluit’s six schools.

The policy would outline where the seven DEA board members can direct parents.

“It’s a GN [Government of Nunavut] issue,” Sherman said of any allegations against Nunavut teachers. “The DEA has no jurisdiction over a teacher.”

But worried Iqaluit parents have asked DEA members a lot of questions.

“They’ve been telling [parents that] they don’t know more than they do,” Sherman said.

A policy to help deal with child sex abuse matters in schools would be beneficial, especially since the DEA board membership changes from year to year, she said.

But Iqaluit DEA member Jack Anawak, who was out of town and could not attend the April 7 meeting, said the DEA shouldn’t be thinking about making a policy unless it is done under “very general terms.”

“We should only be talking about prevention, not any [particular] case,” he said.

It’s very dangerous to discuss individual cases, Anawak said, who also did not name any specific Nunavut teachers in connection to child sexual abuse cases.