A teachers secret past

Paul Sheppards stories always felt far-fetched to Steacy Easton.

Students would watch Sheppards icy, blue eyes light up as he talked about teaching around the world. Flying air force jets. Arresting criminals.

The students sometimes did the mental math, wondering how their teacher, just shy of his 30th birthday, could have lived so many past lives before ending up at their boarding school.

Nothing seemed plausible and everything seemed plausible, and he did a good job of trying to convince you, said Easton. I still dont know what is true.

Sheppards story is full of twists and turns, unlikely anecdotes and credible allegations. His teaching career was marked by sexual abuse charges at a pair of prestigious boarding schools in the United Kingdom and Alberta.

Hes stood trial twice first being found not guilty in England in 2015, before being convicted in 2021 of abusing Easton at the Saint Johns School of Alberta in the 1990s.

After exhausting appeals, Sheppard began serving a four-year prison sentence in 2023. Former students asked CBC News to investigate Sheppards history, believing the full truth never came to light. 

They were right.

A CBC News investigation found Sheppard was a convicted serial child abuser before he ever became a teacher.

His convictions stem from his past life as a police officer. Sheppards short tenure in Stratford, Ont., began in 1985 and ended in 1986, when he was charged with five counts of sexual assault and seven counts of assault. The victims were boys between the ages of 10 and 14.

According to local news coverage of the case, Sheppard pleaded guilty to six counts of assault in 1987, in exchange for the court dropping the sexual assault charges. He began working toward geography and education degrees in Newfoundland immediately after his convictions.

Sheppards criminal history went unnoticed throughout his teaching career, which took him to Canada, the United Kingdom, the Dominican Republic, Congo, Kenya, Kuwait and more.

It also went unnoticed by the Alberta prosecutor and judge who brought Sheppard to justice in 2021.

CBC News tried to track down any documentation of his criminal case at the Ontario Court of Justice and Stratford Police Services. Both said the paperwork had either been misplaced or destroyed.

All that remains are a handful of newspaper articles and the enduring memories of a few people who never forgot.

Steacy Easton never felt more alone than they did in March 2021.

They sat in a makeshift courtroom inside a community hall in Wetaskiwin, Alta., during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Easton sometimes found amusement in the absurdity of the proceedings, which saw witnesses give testimony from a small stage at the front of the room, like a community theatre production of a criminal trial.

When it was Eastons turn to take the stage, they shared the complicated story of sexual advances between a man and a child in a school teeming with fear and masculinity.

One of the things that happens with sexual abuse is trying to sort out the differences between affection and that kind of cataclysmic damage that happens afterwards, Easton said in an interview with CBC News in June. 

There was this very odd and sort of destabilizing dialectic between somebody who seemed to care pretty clearly, and somebody who was, who is, quite scary.

Easton went to the Saint Johns School of Alberta in 1993. Located on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River in Genesee, about 80 kilometres southwest of Edmonton, the school boasted about its gruelling wilderness program. Its founders were unapologetic about its use of corporal punishment.

It was run by Company of the Cross, an Anglican-affiliated order founded by Canadian conservative journalist Ted Byfield and teacher Frank Wiens. They ran three boys boarding schools Saint Johns Schools of Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. The latter made international headlines in 1978 when a dozen kids drowned on an arduous canoeing trip along the Quebec-Ontario border.

Paul Sheppard joined the Saint Johns family in 1990. Divorce filings in Newfoundland and Labrador state he left his estranged wife and infant son and took a job that provided him room and board on the school compound, along with a paltry $10 per day in salary.

Easton remembers Sheppard being one of the first faces their family saw after making the trek down the long, dirt road leading them to the schools compound. 

He was very good at ingratiating himself with parents. He was very charming and had a kind of gravitas or authority that would suggest that a child who was unruly would become ruled, which is, I think, what parents are anxious about, Easton remembered. 

Being a kid coming to grips with queerness in a rural Alberta school that preached masculinity was a difficult adjustment. Easton said Sheppard took them under his wing.

Easton would later tell the court that Sheppard was compassionate and caring but also had archaic views on the punishment of children. Easton said they suffered 34 spankings that year, with Sheppard doling out most of the punishment. Easton said it was a painful and confusing treatment from one of the only people at the school who took an interest in them. 

That was a little difficult to work through, figuring out which Sheppard you would get that day, they said.

Easton told the court about a spanking session in October, during which Sheppard had them drop their pants and fondled their genitals. Sheppard also started supervising showers before Christmas break, Easton said, sometimes twice a day. Then came more sexual encounters Easton estimates about 10 between the fall and spring of that year that involved molestation, masturbation and oral sex.

Easton lasted two years at the school. Sheppard left around the same time, bound for a new job in the Dominican Republic.

Saint Johns was a stepping stone that took him all over the world before bringing him back as deputy headmaster in 1998. A year later, Easton said, they went to the RCMP to file a complaint about Sheppard, but it went nowhere. 

Sheppard was promoted to headmaster in 2000 something that disturbs Easton to this day.

If you have a collection of sheep, a herd of sheep, and you have a wolf who has proven to really enjoy eating sheep, you don't let the wolf back into the paddock, regardless of how good the wolf claims to be at herding sheep, Easton said.

And it feels like Sheppards just exceptionally good at getting into paddocks.

The RCMP finally decided to investigate and lay charges in 2017, after Sheppard had been acquitted of similar offences in the U.K.

The Alberta trial lasted five days, ending with the small-town jury returning a guilty verdict on both counts sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching.

The court heard 15 character references in support of Sheppard from teachers, a local RCMP officer, friends, family, and even an Alberta provincial court judge.

To say that such offending behaviour is contrary to my positive assessment of Dr. Sheppards character is self-evident, wrote Judge Alan Fradsham, whose son was taught by Sheppard. I can only say that it is conduct completely at odds with the character which I have seen him consistently display over the years.

Each of those 15 letters contained some variation of a line saying they never knew Paul Sheppard to be violent, or predatory toward children.

Cory Bernier read the news with a disbelief that developed into rage.

Sitting at home in Stratford, Ont., Bernier swore he was looking at the police officer he met through the Big Brothers program when he was 10 years old one who was convicted of assaulting six kids.

Yet here he was, referred to as a first-time offender with no criminal history.

CBC News met Bernier in a Stratford park in early June and showed him photos of the teacher who was convicted in Alberta. The first thing he noticed were Sheppards icy, blue eyes. 

I can tell by his eyes. Its definitely that Paul Sheppard.

Bernier grew up without his father in his life. Believing her son needed some male guidance, Berniers mother enrolled him in the Big Brothers program in Stratford and got a match with a young police officer who was new in town.

One of his superiors, Deputy Chief Lewis Lawson, remembers attending Sheppards graduation ceremony at the Ontario Police College and meeting his parents.

He seemed like a nice, bright man, Lawson said. He was just another working police officer who was doing his job at that time. But we found out later, of course, what he was doing behind our backs.

Lawson said he heard complaints about Sheppards conduct within a few months of Sheppards arrival on the force.
 

I got rumours from a woman who came in to see me that one of the officers, when he brought her son home for shoplifting, his form of discipline was to ask permission to take the boy up to his bedroom.

Lawson said the woman told him Sheppard asked to search the bedroom for stolen goods. She told him Sheppard then asked if he could administer his own punishment.

When I asked what that punishment would be, she said, Well, he spanked my son. He made him drop his drawers and spanked him, Lawson recalled. I thought, Uh-oh, theres something wrong here.

Lawson said he called Sheppard into his office, and within 10 minutes the junior officer agreed to resign.

He handed me his gun and badge right there and then.

Lawson said he flagged it for a pair of detectives who began investigating Sheppards behaviour. They found other families with similar stories, Lawson said, including some who met Sheppard through his police work and others through volunteer programs.

Bernier said he told the officers Sheppard would pat him on the buttocks when hed get in and out of the car, and usually kiss him on the lips to greet him or say goodbye. He said that treatment progressed, eventually turning into more incidents of inappropriate touching and indecent exposure.

Bernier said the last time it happened was in Sheppards car, in the parking lot of a public park across the lake from Stratfords famous festival grounds. Bernier said hed had enough, and started screaming for Sheppard to stop.

He just turned the car around and dropped me off and told my mom, This isnt working out. Hes unmanageable.

Bernier said he was held back in school that year and began bullying other kids. Hes been to jail several times, he said, and the alleged abuse has had a lifelong effect on himself and his ability to be a father to his children.

I started to become what he actually said I was: Unmanageable.

When CBC News found Bernier, he was in the early stages of suing Sheppard in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, alleging the abuse he endured caused him pain and suffering, as well as causing him to suffer financial hardships.

Sheppard filed a statement of defence to Berniers lawsuit in May. In the document, he acknowledged he knew Bernier through the Big Brothers Big Sisters Canada program and confirmed he was in Stratford in 1985. Hes denied all allegations of abuse.

According to reports from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Sheppard took a plea deal in 1987 and was sentenced to two years probation and given a suspended sentence. Lawson said he found out in the late 1980s that Sheppard was working at a school in Newfoundland. He said he called the school and warned the principal of Sheppards past behaviour. 

He didnt hear about Paul Sheppard again until he was contacted by CBC News in 2024.

The unravelling of Paul Sheppards public reputation began with a secret that was nearly taken to the grave.

It was Christmas 2012, and 35-year-old James Glynn was spending the holiday with his family in Brighton, England. It had been a turbulent few years for Glynn, who struggled with addiction and mental health issues throughout his adult life.

He broke down on Boxing Day, and began telling his sister about his experiences at the prestigious Ampleforth College when he was 11.

He said there was one teacher who he thought quite liked him, Emma Glynn told the Times of London in 2016. Initially, James felt he could trust him. Then he started to cry.

According to the report, Glynn broke down and told his sister that hed been raped by Paul Sheppard on multiple occasions when he was 11. 

The Glynn family declined an interview with CBC News, but a spokesperson for the family confirmed the contents of the Times reporting.

His sisters said they always knew his experiences at the school were a contributing factor to his lifelong struggles. In 1998, his father, David Glynn, a prominent English lawyer based in Hong Kong, filed a lawsuit against Ampleforth College for 50,000, claiming James had been a victim of assault, battery and negligence while he was at the school.

James Glynn died by suicide a few months after disclosing the alleged abuse to his family. They decided to lodge a complaint with the North Yorkshire Police about the man they believed caused irreparable damage to their loved one.

In December 2014, Sheppard landed at Heathrow Airport after returning from a teaching job in Kuwait. He was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault against the now-deceased James Glynn.

The Crown Prosecution Service later decided against pressing charges, given the allegation was 25 years old and the key witness was now dead. But Sheppards initial arrest sparked a larger investigation into his brief tenure at the most prestigious Catholic boarding school in England, a tenure that ended with multiple allegations of improper behaviour and an internal investigation.

Despite that, the headmaster provided Sheppard with a glowing reference for his next job. The Times obtained those letters and shared them with CBC News.

He is extremely well suited to any employment where the service of others is the paramount consideration, Father Dominic Milroy wrote. He has a high level of idealism and will not readily be satisfied unless this idealism is at the centre of any work he does.

Sheppards direct supervisor, Father Henry Wansborough, also provided a strong reference.

He is a good disciplinarian, he wrote. He himself presents, and insists on from those in his charge, the highest standards of behaviour, manners and dress.

Sheppards defence lawyer later argued the Milroy investigation did not turn up anything sexual.

The Crown Prosecution Service came to a different conclusion, and charged Sheppard with seven counts of indecent assault against five former students. On the first day of his trial, however, the judge dismissed the charges involving two students because their complaints holding a boy down while straddling him, and kissing a boy on the forehead while stroking his body didnt meet the standard for indecency. The Crown opted not to proceed with charges for two other students.

That left one complainant who was not one of the 11 children who went to the headmaster in 1989 to face the trial alone.

As a result, the jury was never told about those 11 students. It was never told about the headmasters investigation, nor the circumstances under which Sheppard left the school.

The jury found Sheppard not guilty on a single count of indecent assault.

Back in Canada, Sheppards six-year prison sentence was shortened to four years on appeal. In a written decision, two of the three judges said his punishment was too harsh given the crime. 

The judges cited his lack of a criminal record in their decision. It remains unclear how the court in Alberta was not made aware of the Ontario convictions. The prosecutor on the case, Drew Gillespie, declined to comment. His office is still appealing the sentence reduction, and the Supreme Court of Canada has yet to indicate if it will hear the case.

Sheppard was granted day parole after a hearing in late July, in which he admitted to the convictions in Stratford but said it was strictly related to corporal punishment, and nothing sexual. As a condition of his parole, Sheppard was ordered to stay away from children, or hell end up back behind bars.

Steacy Easton has complicated feelings on prison. An abolitionist in principle, Easton admits news of Sheppards time as a police officer has shaken those beliefs. They also believe Sheppard was just a symptom of a larger problem with institutions like the Saint Johns School of Alberta.

I think that putting this one person in jail as a scapegoat for the overarching problem of the institution takes the institution off the hook, Easton said.

Its taken me a very long time to articulate that Sheppard was systematically part of an organization that sought to exploit and destroy children.

In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada outlawed corporal punishment in Canadian schools. Saint Johns School of Alberta, the last Company of the Cross school, shut down for good in 2008.

Ted Byfield, who died in 2021, was remembered fondly by mentees including current and former Alberta premiers Danielle Smith and Jason Kenney. Company of the Cross cofounder Frank Wiens died in 2010. His own son called his experience at the Manitoba school a long sojourn through hell.

Some boys flourished and I say good for them. Some died a little each day, Rick Wiens wrote in an op-ed to the Winnipeg Free Press.

A lot remains unknown about Sheppards international endeavours. After his second stint at Saint Johns, he taught in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, China, Cameroon and Congo. None of those schools responded to requests from CBC News. 

Cory Bernier has no issues with Sheppard serving prison time. 

He believes theres a vast difference between how Sheppard was treated by the justice system and his own experiences with the law. Bernier never had the best legal defence money could buy. He never had police officers to vouch for him, and he certainly never had a judge for a character reference.

Hes hoping the civil court will be different, but Bernier insists hes not interested in money for himself.

Im suing him for my children and my grandchildren. I will give them something because [my] children have definitely suffered for the actions that I've done as a father, and I believe he has a big part in a lot of my misfortunes.