A teacher whose last job was at Citadel middle school in Port Coquitlam has pleaded guilty to sexually exploiting two young people in Coquitlam during incidents that date back more than a decade.
Russell Lance Read entered guilty pleas last month and is expected to be back in B.C. Provincial Court March 18 for sentencing, according to Neil MacKenzie of the Attorney General's criminal justice branch.
One of the charges is related to offences between July 1998 and February 2000 in Coquitlam, Victoria, Ladner and Vancouver, MacKenzie said, while the second sexual exploitation charge is for offences that took place between January 2001 and June 2003 in Coquitlam with a second victim.
Details of the offences are limited because of a publication ban to protect the victims but MacKenzie said that in one case, Read also pleaded guilty to administering a stupefying or overpowering drug with the intent to commit sexual exploitation.
This is not the first time Read's actions as a teacher have been the subject of inquiry. In 2009, Read was suspended from teaching and given a 10-year ban from re-certifying by the former B.C. College of Teachers (now the B.C. Teacher Regulation Branch).
Records obtained by The Tri-City News show he was investigated by the college in 2008 for incidents between 2002 and 2004, which he agreed constituted professional misconduct. They included referring to students as "Grade 12 babes" in an email, passing on information about the Wicca religion to a student at her workplace and making inappropriate jokes or references to students while employed as a middle school teacher. The school isn't named in the disciplinary report.
In earlier incidents between 1979 and 1983, Read was found to have given a young female the drug amyl nitrate while he was a teacher at a First Nations band school.
