TORONTO (JTA) — A former teacher at two Toronto-area Jewish day schools was found guilty of several sexual offenses.
Stephen Joseph Schacter was found guilty last week by a Superior Court of Justice judge of three counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual interference and one count of gross indecency, the Canadian Jewish News reported last week.
Sentencing hearings on the child pornography charge and the sexual offenses are scheduled for early 2019.
The offenses occurred between 1982 and 2002. The case featured four complaints.
Schacter was a teacher at Eitz Chaim schools between 1986 and 2004. At a news conference Monday, police said Schacter taught second and third grades at the Orthodox Jewish school, which runs three campuses in the Toronto area.
In May, Schacter was found guilty of one count of possessing child pornography. Aspects of that case were introduced as evidence in the trial over the sexual offenses.
Police arrested Schacter in 2016. In 2015, he had been charged with one count of possessing child pornography. At the time, police encouraged his former students to come forward.
At his trial in June, the court heard from a male witness, now 47, who testified that he was sexually exploited by Schacter 30 or 40 times between the ages of 11 and 13, from approximately 1982 to 1985.
At the time, Schacter was a supply teacher at Yeshiva Yesodei HaTorah, an all-boys Orthodox Jewish school that the witness attended. Schacter was a substitute teacher for afternoon secular studies classes.
Police also said Schacter was an office administrator, student supervisor and supply teacher at United Synagogue Day School, now Robbins Hebrew Academy, in 2004 and 2006. He worked as a private tutor from 2009 until 2011.
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