A disgraced teacher was sentenced Friday morning to six years in prison for abusing for months her former pupil, aged just eight, with whom she had fallen in love.
“She has tarnished the image of thousands of teachers who devote themselves daily to the good of their students,” judge Serge Cimon told Josianne Lévesque at the Laval courthouse.
Photo d’archives, MARTIN ALARIE
The 43-year-old woman was teaching her victim in the second year of elementary school at a private college in Montreal. The abuse that lasted 17 months, however, took place in the context of homework help.
La Lavalloise listened to the magistrate read his judgment of forty pages this morning from the dock, she who had taken the way to the penitentiary last May, almost a year following pleading guilty. Dressed in a black jacket and wearing a blue mask, she stared at the ground for long minutes.
Manipulation
“The evidence demonstrates some manipulation on his part in order to get closer [de sa victime]which highlights the premeditation and contributes to his moral guilt,” lamented the judge.
Lévesque had managed to gain the trust of his victim’s mother, even becoming a close friend of the family.
In addition, the teacher did everything to ensure that the young student kept his crimes secret, often repeating to him that she “might lose everything and go to prison”, had entrusted the latter to the Journal during an interview last August.
Wanting the abuse to stop, he ended up confessing to his mother in August 2020 that Lévesque kissed him on the mouth and with his tongue. Then in the following days, he revealed all the sordid details of the attacks that his guardian inflicted on him.
“As a parent, it’s just normal to trust a teacher and that’s why it was important for us to get justice. She was supposed to help him, not harm him,” said the victim’s mother, relieved by the sentence.
