Testimony ends in trial of teacher accused of assaulting student

Testimony in the trial of a former Coral Harbour teacher accused of assaulting a student came to a close Tuesday.

Michelle Wolf, 46, who taught at Sakku School in Coral Harbour, is charged with assaulting a pre-teen student on May 5, 2023. Her trial began Tuesday in Coral Harbour.

The student cannot be named due to a court-ordered publication ban.

On Tuesday, the youth testified he had asked Wolf to go to the bathroom. She agreed but then grabbed him by his hoodie “for a minute,” hurting his neck.

He described the pain level as a five on a scale of one to 10.

After the incident, he said, he told Wolf he was going to tell the principal and she replied, “Go right ahead.”

Defence lawyer Lisa Jean Helps questioned the youth’s memory of the event.

In her cross-examination, Helps suggested the student had disrupted Wolf’s math class after an older student took his hat. The pair were running around the classroom and on desks, she said.

The youth disagreed, saying he had been playing with friends.

Helps suggested the youth feared getting in trouble for chasing a fellow student and didn’t tell police about the bullying when he reported the incident five months later, in October 2023.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Her grabbing your hood was a complete surprise? Because there was absolutely no reason for it that you could see?” Helps asked.

“Yeah,” he answered.

Wolf testified she grabbed the youth to stop the classroom disruption.

“Kids in the class were encouraging them, laughing. No one was helping the situation,” she said.

Helps asked Wolf why she grabbed the student.

“I thought they were going to get hurt or they would hurt somebody else,” she said.

Wolf said she didn’t intend to hurt the student but there was no other way to control the classroom.

Wolf said she brought the incident to the attention of the child’s homeroom teacher and vice-principal, and was told no further action was needed.

She said she did not have a good relationship with school administration, in particular the acting principal.

Helps asked if she thought the principal would support her against the student.

“Absolutely not,” Wolf replied.

Wolf left the school in June 2023. The next month, she filed a harassment complaint with the Government of Nunavut over treatment she said she received from the principal.

Helps noted that when the police report was filed in October, the principal’s partner and the student’s mother went to the police station with him.

Earlier, the youth testified that both the principal and her partner had told him they did not like Wolf.

Wolf had been a teacher for 22 years, but had been at the school for seven months when the incident occurred.

Under questioning by Crown prosecutor Romy Leclerc, Wolf agreed grabbing the boy’s hoodie had hurt him.

“Even two years later, you still don’t see any other way to have [dealt] with the situation? There was no other way to stop the [student] then by pulling his hoodie?” Leclerc asked

“No,” Wolf replied.

Both lawyers agreed many of the events described by the youth and Wolf matched.

However, while the defence claimed the student was grabbed after he disrupted Wolf’s class, the Crown suggested it was a separate incident that happened in the afternoon.

“At the end of the day, this is about a teacher, unsupported by the administration and dealing with a difficult situation,” Helps said in her closing argument.

The roughhousing put other students at risk and “unfortunately, Ms. Wolf did as much as she could to control the situation, including calling for help that didn’t come.”

Leclerc said, “We have in front of us two different versions of what happened that day.”

She maintained the student had been consistent in his testimony and did not agree with the defence’s contention that the incident happened in the morning.

Wolf agreed she pulled the hoodie and that it hurt the child, Leclerc said.

Leclerc, however, did not agree with Wolf’s contention that it was the only way to deal with the situation.

“She was a teacher for 22 years. Fights among children do happen on multiple occasions. There were other ways of dealing with the situation,” Leclerc said.

Justice Mia Manocchio is scheduled to deliver her verdict March 17 in court in Iqaluit.