B.C. teacher’s certificate cancelled after messaging student about her breasts

An empty school hallway is seen in a 2020 file image.

Warning: This story contains disturbing details

A former B.C. high school teacher has been banned from the profession for five years after sending a series of sexual messages to a vulnerable student.

The teenager was in a program Jeffrey Allan Jennens was teaching when the exchange took place in May 2023, according to a summary of a consent agreement he signed with the province’s commissioner for teacher regulation.

The document does not specify which program Jennens was teaching, or the school where he was working, to protect the student’s identity.

According to the summary, Jennens sent the messages as part of a “broader conversation” with the teenager after he clicked her Instagram profile and saw “semi-nude photos” she had posted.

His remarks included: “Your shower story turned me on a lot. I was looking at it today.”

“I saw you after coming out of the shower with the censorship sign over your breasts, and I wanted to see them, and there was steam on the mirror and I wanted there not to be steam,” he also wrote.

In addition, he told her he was in a hot tub while “not wearing a bathing suit,” and that there were “so many things but Immusually (sic) not allowed to say” to her.

Jennens told investigators he was intoxicated at the time of the interaction, but accepted that was not an excuse for his conduct.

The incident was reported to the commissioner for teacher regulation the same month, and Jennens signed an undertaking not to practise using his teaching certificate two days later. He ultimately resigned from his position in June 2025.

After reviewing the circumstances, the commissioner decided to cancel Jennens’ teaching certificate and prohibit him from applying for another for five years, noting in the consent agreement summary that his behaviour was “a serious breach of his position of power and trust as a teacher,” and had harmed the student’s “emotional safety and well-being.”

“Jennens agreed that he will not make any statement orally or in writing which contradicts, disputes or calls into question the terms of the consent resolution agreement or the admissions made in it,” the summary reads.

Jennens was also charged with child luring over the interaction. He was found not guilty last year.

His defence argued the teacher sent the messages as part of an effort to highlight the risks of posting provocative images online, and never intended to have a sexual relationship with the student.

“Crown has the obligation to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, not on a balance of probability, that the purpose of Mr. Jennens’ text messages was to facilitate the commission of the offense of sexual touching in the future,” Judge Cathie Heinrichs said.

“On the evidence of Mr. Jennens, I am left with a reasonable doubt about his intention.”

With files from Castanet