A former Interlake teacher was sentenced earlier this month to 33 months in jail for child luring.
Kevin Braun had exchanged thousands of text and Instagram messages with a student, who was 14 years old at the time. The judge noted that Braun had been grooming the student to be receptive to touching of a sexual nature.
The student’s mom told the Tribune that her daughter was emotional during the sentencing and that they had great family support throughout the two-year trial.
“We were happy with the sentencing,” she said. “Our judge was very fair.”
The former teacher is also prohibited from contacting the victim as well as any other people under age 16 who are not family members.
The student’s mom said the former basketball coach and teacher lured her daughter when she was in Grade 9 prior to the pandemic.
“We definitely did notice something was off with her. She was not getting along with her siblings, not eating properly, wasn’t engaging in conversations at home like she normally would so we took her cell phone away,” the mom said.
“And when she never asked for it back and came back into her actual self after a few days, we assumed she had been maybe arguing with some friends. Upon turning the phone on, I found the text message communications between Kevin and my daughter.”
At first, she wasn’t sure what exactly she was reading in the text messages.
“I thought maybe I was overreacting or interpreting the messages wrong,” she said.
“He was a huge part of all three of our kids’ school and sports lives their elementary school years. I wasn’t really sure how to proceed.”
So she put the phone away and decided to read through the messages later. However, at about 1 a.m., her daughter’s phone dinged with an Instagram message. It was the teacher telling the teen how sorry he was, how he would always be her best friend and how he loved her.
“I instantly got out of bed and I spent the entire night, while my husband and children slept, reading through hundreds of text messages,” she said.
“ When I got to the message about the part where he invited her for grilled cheese sandwiches and was telling her how she needed to sneak in the back door and then maybe to hold off because his wife, who was pregnant at the time, might be coming home early, I instantly knew that what I was reading was not a matter of me overreacting.”
After her kids got on the bus on Monday morning, the concerned mom called the school’s guidance counsellor and asked if they could meet off school property. The guidance counsellor advised her to speak to the vice-principal.
The mom said the school’s administrative staff was amazing. The school division’s therapist and the school’s guidance counsellor offered support to her daughter during the difficult time.
“I will forever be grateful for the two of them,” the mom said.
However, not everyone was supportive towards the mom and her children, who experienced some bullying at the time.
When the pandemic hit, the mom felt it was a blessing in disguise since she could keep her kids safely at home.
“I got to shield them from the outside world basically,” she said. “As the trial proceeded, our family knew that we needed to endure all of the emotions that we were going through in order to help protect the young ladies growing up in our community. We vowed to do that, so that’s what we did.”
For other parents, she offers some sage advice in an effort to prevent a similar situation.
“I have so much advice to give that I could probably write a book. But if I have to sum it up, I would say parents need to be very mindful of changes in their children, whether it be emotional or behavioural. Not every person that has a position of power and trust should be trusted, and we should always believe our children first,” she said.
“I’ve also learned that it’s very important to stick up for everything that you believe is right, whether it puts your reputation on the line in a small town or not. We owe it to our children to fight as hard as we can for them.”
