A former Port Coquitlam teacher has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail for sexually exploiting two young people and administering a drug to one of them.
Russell Lance Read, 60, pleaded guilty late last year to two counts of touching a young person for a sexual purpose and one count of administering a stupefying drug to commit an indictable offence.
He'll serve 18 months in jail for offences that took place from July 1998 to February 2000 in Coquitlam, Victoria, Ladner and Vancouver. That jail term will be followed by another 12-month sentence for crimes dating back to January 2001 to June 2003 in Coquitlam, involving a second victim.
Read was also sentenced to 12 months, to be served concurrently with the other terms, for administering an overpowering drug with intent to commit sexual exploitation.
Each of the sentences come with a lifetime order on the National Sex Offender Registry.
Details of the offences are limited because of a publication ban to protect the victims, but Read's conduct as a teacher has been investigated before. Read's last position was at Citadel middle school in PoCo, between 1996 and 2004, where he taught computers and coached rugby and volleyball, as well as working with the choir.
He was suspended from teaching in 2009 and given a 10-year ban from re-certifying by the former B.C. College of Teachers (now the B.C. Teacher Regulation Branch).
Read was also investigated by the college in 2008 for incidents between 2002 and 2004, which he agreed constituted professional misconduct, including referring to students at "Grade 12 babes" in an email and making inappropriate jokes or references to students while employed as a middle school teacher.
And 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.
