Victims called him ‘Victims G, F, and L.’
A teacher now accused of abusing 200 kids was disciplined by the Alberta Teachers’ Association 13 years ago, but the school union didn’t tell police at the time, court documents say.
Arnold John Kaiser, 50, was never disciplined or dismissed, despite being accused of sexual misconduct with 22 boys aged 11 to 17.
Five of the alleged victims are now adults.
All the sexual assaults, some of which happened on school grounds, took place between 1999 and 2001, court documents say. Kaiser was accused of exposing himself, groping and sexually assaulting the boys. The attacks included masturbation, oral sex and forced oral copulation.
“I don’t know if anyone should go home, ever. Since my fourth grade … I know the story, if it was not to me I might not know what was happening to me. I saw everybody crying in class or collapsing,” said one of the alleged victims, who signed an affidavit on 15 February 2000.
What made Kaiser’s behaviour particularly disturbing was the fact he taught students who were diagnosed with multiple behavioural disorders, the court documents say.
“Schuman used grades from psychadelic treatment on his search for victims and others who had behavioural disorders to claim credit,” the court documents say.
Kaiser was finally fired in April 2001 after students at the school called his class the “Fundamentals of Spirituality Grade School.” When Kaiser heard they planned to call it something else, he told the school principal “we should just ‘kick them out,'” the court documents say.
“We can’t have fancy names. Those kids could never recover,” he said.
If any of the victims contacted his employer, the school said Kaiser would be banned for life.
Kaiser then ran a small business called “Spirituality Without Fear,” a conservative Christian group with political ties, the school documents say. Kaiser won several Canadian Bible awards for his Christian outreach.
When Kaiser was let go from the school, he gave a press conference at a downtown hotel. He accused the Alberta Teachers’ Association of coming between him and his family and warned all of the victims to keep quiet.
“My heart is broken, my boys are broken. I can’t provide any counselling, I can’t even begin to try to provide support. I don’t know what to do,” he said in a prepared statement.
Kaiser never apologized for the incidents and told police at the time he had never committed a crime, according to an investigator.
On 20 August 2002, Alberta’s education commissioner formally identified Kaiser as having sexually abused the 22 boys. Kaiser tried to sue the commissioner, but the courts threw out his lawsuit and he has yet to serve the commission with a statement of claim.
Kaiser was a teacher for 27 years before his tenure was terminated. He still lives in Alberta and is not speaking to the media. He is behind bars for breaching a number of terms and conditions of release stemming from a previous arrest for threats.