ST. JEROME, Que. — A former Quebec high school gym teacher seduced her 15-year-old student during a camping trip the two took together, beginning a two-year relationship that would involve sex every day in her office, car or at the boy’s home, a court heard Friday.
The student, now 25, testified at Tania Pontbriand’s trial for sexual assault that she showered him with gifts, including a dog tag engraved with the date of their first sexual encounter.
Pontbriand taught the student, who can’t be named, gym and leadership, a course that involved winter camping and bike trips.
During the first bike trip with the entire class, the two sat up talking until six in the morning, sharing their inner thoughts.
“She said that marrying her husband had been a mistake,” the man testified. “She said I could look into her eyes and know what she was thinking.”
A couple of weeks later, they went camping alone — with the permission of the boy’s mother.
They had intercourse and oral sex twice that night, and the next day Pontbriand drove the boy home.
The two continued to have sex daily in Pontbriand’s office, in her car, or at her home when her husband was playing hockey or golf. Throughout the summer, they’d go cycling together and have sex in the woods or at the boy’s house.
On his 16th birthday, Sept. 2, 2002, Pontbriand decorated the boy’s front step with balloons, a piggy bank and gave him 17 gifts — one for every year, plus one for good luck.
Pontbriand, who taught at Rosemere High School, was stripped of her teaching permit in 2010, two years after criminal charges were laid.
On Friday, the 40-year-old sat at a desk behind the witness box, taking copious notes.
Her lawyer filed a motion this week to have the charges thrown out because it’s taken too long to come to trial, but the judge rejected it Friday.
Postmedia News