P.E.I. child and youth advocate questions inquiry into PSB's handling of Craswell case
Bernstein says he'll await Jenkins report before deciding if he'll launch his own review
Prince Edward Island's child and youth advocate is raising concerns about an upcoming review of school policies in the wake of a former substitute teacher's sex crimes case.
The Progressive Conservative government ordered the third-party inquiry of Public Schools Branch policies and procedures spurred by the case of Matthew Alan Craswell.
Craswell, 40, pleaded guilty last month to one count of sexual interference over the way in which he touched a young female student while teaching at Stratford's Glen Stewart Primary School during a classroom game in April 2024.
Marvin Bernstein, the province's independent child and youth advocate, said it's "lamentable" that officials with the province's Education Department didn't reach out to his office directly after the case came to light.
"A preferable course of action would have been early, proactive and direct communication with the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate by the Department of Education and Early Years and the Public Schools Branch, particularly with respect to the advocate's statutory role of oversight of public bodies providing reviewable services to children and youth," Bernstein wrote in a letter released to the public Friday morning.
Speaking with CBC News on Thursday, Bernstein said his office only learned about developments in the case through media reports, discussions in the legislature and concerned parents, not from government officials.
"There wasn't any real communication, either by the Public Schools Branch or by the department," he told CBC's Island Morning.
He also noted that "constructive discussions" have since taken place between his office and provincial staff.
Many questions were raised during the spring sitting of the P.E.I. Legislature after CBC News reported on Craswell's guilty plea on the sexual interference charge, as well as on three unrelated child pornography charges.
Some questions from the opposition parties involved the fact that education officials did not notify either police or Child Protection Services officials about the complaints that Craswell had allegedly touched children inappropriately on two reported occasions. Allegations of similar behaviour at Charlottetown's West Kent Elementary School in 2023 eventually came to light during the police investigation.
PSB officials also allowed Craswell to keep teaching at the high school level following the Stratford primary school investigation.
Those facts led opposition MLAs to quiz the government over school officials' duty to report, a provision of the province's Child, Youth and Family Services Act that outlines the legal obligation for anyone to report a suspected case of child abuse to authorities as soon as possible.
In his letter, Bernstein wrote that he was "troubled by the pervasive lack of understanding" around the duty to report, saying the province's focus should not be on providing school staff with more training on how to investigate complaints of misconduct. Instead, he said they may need retraining on their mandatory obligation to report incidents to the proper authorities, who would then investigate.
"The Office of the Child and Youth Advocate is deeply concerned with the perception that the private verification of protection concerns on the part of educators and other staff working in schools is required or precludes mandatory reporting to Child Protection Services or to the police," he wrote.
Bernstein said teachers and school staff are not child protection workers, investigators or police and they should not be expected to serve those roles.
"Teachers, other staff within the education system have a lot on their hands in terms of teaching, meeting the diverse educational needs and capacities of the students, sometimes managing difficult behaviours," he said.
"Simply speaking, the obligation is to report reasonable grounds to suspect that a child has been harmed, that a child is in need of protection, and there is no need to verify, to investigate."
Questions around review's independence
The facts revealed in court as Craswell pleaded guilty led P.E.I. Premier Rob Lantz to rise in the legislature to apologize to Island parents.
The province later named P.E.I.'s former chief justice, David Jenkins, to head the third-party review of the Public Schools Branch and its practices. That process is set to begin June 2.
Bernstein indicated in the letter that his office may also choose to conduct its own investigation that "would be systemic in nature, reaching conceptually and temporally beyond the specific case at hand and exercising the advocate's statutory power to compel information across government departments."
While saying he holds Jenkins's career and reputation "in high esteem," the child and youth advocate raised concerns about the independence of the provincial review.
"It must be noted that such a review, although conducted by a third party, remains government-directed, with the Department of Education and Early Years and Public Schools Branch controlling the terms of reference, compensation to the reviewer, and ultimately, the decision as to what content is publicly released and how this is done," Bernstein wrote.
"In addition, a third-party review, in and by itself, does not provide the public with any assurance that there will be a mechanism for objectively monitoring and publicly reporting on the implementation of the recommendations contained in the third-party report."
Bernstein said there are several key criteria he would need to see in the provincial review to potentially forgo his own investigation.
"I'd like to know whether or not the individuals who made decisions not to report this incident or previous incidents, who are those people? What did they know? When did they know it? Who made the ultimate decision not to report? Whether or not the recommendations… are adequate in terms of potentially changing legislation, policies, programs," he said.
Premier welcomes involvement
Asked on Thursday to respond to what Bernstein's embargoed news release said, Lantz said he welcomes an additional investigation conducted by the child and youth advocate, saying the matter needs "all the eyes that we can get."
Island students continue to attend school every day, with no immediate actions taken to ensure... that schools are safer places today than they were before.— Marvin Bernstein, P.E.I. child and youth advocate
"[Bernstein's] office is an independent office, and we can't direct him to undertake investigations. He actually has the independent authority to undertake an investigation of any kind that he sees fit to do," the premier told CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin.
"In his letter, he's outlined that he may in fact do that, and I would encourage him."
Lantz added that Jenkins will have broad and independent authority to conduct his review, and has the same powers to compel witnesses and documents as the child and youth advocate would have.
Student rights 'cannot be placed on hold'
Bernstein said he will review Jenkins's report once it's released, then will hold a public town hall meeting to get feedback on whether an independent investigation by the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate is needed.
Meanwhile, Bernstein criticized the province for deferring any such public meetings to address the safety of children in Island schools until after the Jenkins review is complete.
He said the rights of students "cannot be placed on hold while the third-party review is taking place out of a sense of convenience or for the avoidance of accountability...
"The reality is that Island students continue to attend school every day, with no immediate actions taken to ensure ... that schools are safer places today than they were before recent information entered the public discourse," he said in the news release.
"The position of the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate is that students and their families do not have time to wait."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from CBC News: Compass and Island Morning