A 62-year-old former public school teacher from Laval now living in Toronto has been sentenced to 10 months of house arrest followed by 14 months of curfew after being found guilty of sexually exploiting a teenage girl two decades ago.
François Durocher had taught ecology to the complainant, an unnamed 16-year-old girl, at École secondaire Curé-Antoine-Labelle in Sainte-Rose around the beginning of the 2000s.
Around the same time, he was also a grade school teacher at École primaire Villemaire also in Sainte-Rose.
An affair between him and the girl began when they ran into each other after she had dropped out of school.
He offered her a place to stay in his home, while making a condition that she would go back to finish her high-school.
According to court testimony, the two had a sexual relationship over a period of several months.
Durocher had reportedly also been previously arrested for alleged sexual improprieties involving another student, although that case was dropped.
In rendering his decision, Quebec Court Judge Alex Dalpé said he took into account that “there was a relationship involving confidence, an abuse of authority.”
In addition to the house arrest and curfew, Durocher’s name will appear in the national sex offenders’ registry for the next 20 years.
