Former band teacher Roger Jabbour sentenced to 15 months in jail

Roger Jabbour, the former band teacher at Colonel Gray High School in Charlottetown, was sentenced Tuesday morning to 15 months in jail on three sex-related charges.

He also received 18 months probation and will be added to the sex offender registry.

Jabbour was found guilty of three sex-related charges in September involving three former students.

Of the three guilty findings, one was sexual interference, which involves sexual touching. The two other guilty findings were sexual exploitation, which involve sexual touching by a person in authority or position of trust. The judge stayed two charges of sexual interference and found Jabbour not guilty of three more serious charges of sexual assault.

The complainants were female band students of Jabbour's at Colonel Gray High School in Charlottetown between Sept. 2012 and June 2015. Their identities are protected under a court-ordered publication ban.

'Student-teacher relationship … raises the level of seriousness'

Provincial court Judge John Douglas decided on a sentence that went beyond the mandatory minimum of one year. 

The Crown recommended a sentence within the range of 18 months to two years less a day.

Defence attorney Joel Pink had argued that the mandatory minimum in this case was grossly disproportionate, and that Jabbour should be sentenced to no more than six months, and suggested house arrest should be considered.

Douglas disagreed.

"I cannot conclude that a mandatory minimum sentence of one year would be so grossly disproportionate as to outrage standards of decency and be abhorrent or intolerable to society," he said in his sentencing remarks.

Douglas outlined a number of aggravating factors during sentencing.

As a teacher, he said, Jabbour was in a very special position of trust. It is a role that is second only to the role of parent.

"It was the whole contexts of this student-teacher relationship … that raises the level of seriousness of these offences," said Douglas.

Letters of support

Douglas noted the ongoing impact on the victims, which included anxiety, anorexia, depression and low self-esteem. He described how Jabbour used his position as a teacher to develop even closer relationships with them.

"This victim was turned into Jabbour's personal confidante and personal crutch," he said of one of the girls.

Douglas noted he had received several letters of support for Jabbour from the community.

"It is very clear in this case that Jabbour has had a very significant and positive impact on some of his students and his community in general," he said.

But he concluded the mitigating factors did not balance out the aggravating ones.

'Moral blameworthiness'

During the sentencing hearing, Crown prosecutor Valerie Moore said house arrest would not be consistent with the fundamental principles of sentencing, and would not deter Jabbour and others from committing such offences.

"The key issue in this whole sentencing hearing is the moral blameworthiness of the accused," said Moore, going on to list a number of aggravating circumstances in the case.

"His high degree of trust, the fact that there were multiple victims and multiple occurrences, the fact that he actively and aggressively resisted the victims' attempts to remove themselves from abuse … the egregious abuse of a position of trust."

Principal supervision

In comments on the pre-sentence report, it was noted that Jabbour had previously been under supervision from school principals at Colonel Gray.

In July of 2017 a police officer as part of his investigation interviewed Kevin Whitrow, then principal of Colonel Gray. Whitrow told the officer he had received three or four complaints a year against Jabbour during the seven years he was principal, and he did not file reports on these complaints in Jabbour's file. He said he dealt with the complaints by meeting with the parents and Jabbour.

Pink noted there was nothing to say those complaints were sexual in nature, and that they might have been connected to his teaching style, for example. Moore acknowledged this was true.

Jabbour's life upended

Pink noted that for 46 years, the 66-year-old Jabbour had been an integral part of the music and education communities on P.E.I.

"He's lost his teacher's licence because of this, he's been vilified on social media, he's lost his position as director of community jazz band," said Pink.

Pink provided the court with a number of cases that he described as similar in which the sentence was 90 days. In his remarks, Douglas noted that in all of those cases there was just one victim.

Jabbour still faces an appeal by the Crown in a second case of sexual exploitation involving a former student, dating back to the early 1990s.

Jabbour was found not guilty on two counts in that case in November but the Crown has appealed, asking that the decision be set aside and convictions entered or that a new trial be ordered.

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