Yusuf Ali Talukder was convicted of sexually assaulting a student in 2010. Because provincial authorities have no jurisdiction over private education, he can work at his own after-school program.
OLIVIA CARVILLE / TORONTO STAR Order this photo
Yusuf Ali Talukder, principal of the Dhaka Learning Centre, was sentenced to six months in jail in 2010 for sexually assaulting a female student under the age of 14.
A convicted sex offender banned from working in public schools is tutoring children in a private classroom in Toronto.
Yusuf Ali Talukder, principal of the Dhaka Learning Centre, was sentenced to six months in jail in 2010 for sexually assaulting a female student under the age of 14.
He was found guilty of putting his hand inside the student’s bra, squeezing her breast on multiple occasions and rubbing the zipper of her pants during class, according to the court decision.
Talukder, 52, pleaded not guilty, and in an interview last week he told the Star he was innocent.
The Dhaka Learning Centre is an afterschool tutorial program owned by Talukder.
Because it is a private business, provincial education authorities had no power to stop the principal, who is on the sex offender registry, from walking out of jail and back into his office.
The court forbade Talukder from being in a public area where children would likely be present, such as a park, playground or school. It also banned him from working “in a position of trust or authority towards persons under the age of fourteen” for 10 years, according to his prohibition order.
But, in a handwritten amendment to the order, Justice Donna Hackett granted Talukder the right to be employed around children — only if he was “in the immediate presence of another adult in the same room.”
When the Star visited the one-classroom learning centre last Tuesday, Talukder said a 22-year-old university student was acting as his adult supervisor. The alleged supervisor told the Star he was only 18.
Talukder had been a voluntary member of the Ontario College of Teachers since 2005. After he was released from jail, he was summoned to a disciplinary hearing, which he declined to attend.
The college, which regulates public school teachers, revoked Talukder’s licence and registration, preventing him from ever teaching in a public school again.
But because the college has no jurisdiction over the private sector, its watchdog powers fall short of the Dhaka Learning Centre.
The Ministry of Education also has no role in the regulatory oversight of private tutoring programs or any of the 900 private schools that operate in the province, a ministry spokesman told the Star.
The independent tutorial centre, which primarily caters to Toronto’s Bengali community, offers after-school tutoring for children as young as 6, according to the centre’s website.
It is tucked away inside a block of shops, up a narrow flight of stairs and down a corridor, on the corner of a busy intersection in Scarborough.
Its charges are taped to the front door: $90 for four lessons a month and $320 for 20 lessons a month. A poster on the door advertising the centre has two spelling mistakes, one corrected with a black marker.
When the Star visited the centre last week, Talukder was sitting in his office, surrounded by paperwork, while six students aged 15 to 21 quietly studied in the bare-walled classroom next door.
He moved from his office to the classroom, where he helped students with math and physics homework.
Talukder, who was born in Bangladesh, spoke softly as he explained his view of the incident that led to his conviction.
“I was teaching the person and maybe sometimes I may, my body can touch the students. So there is a complaint that things, you know here in Canada are sometimes a problem, like those things,” Talukder said in his office.
He continued: “Somebody complained about things here and, yeah, it is very difficult to work with teenagers, right. Anybody can complain.”
According to the court decision, Talukder started grooming the victim when she was 12; he would point to her bra strap and ask her what it was and then trace his hand around the neckline of her shirt.
During a tutorial period in the late 2000s, when the victim was sitting at the back of the room, Talukder put his hand into her bra and “squeezed her breast on 5 –7 separate occasions,” the decision says.
He also lifted the bottom of her shirt and “told her to sit properly when she had her legs crossed and rubbed the zipper of her pants lightly with his knuckles,” the court decision said.
“She elbowed him a little at one point to get him away from her, but it did not work. Once, he pulled his hand away quickly when one of the [other students] turned around,” it said.
The student started to cry silently in class and the decision says Talukder “gave her his notebook on which was already written in pencil, ‘Never tell anybody.’”
In court, the victim’s mother and aunt testified that when they confronted Talukder at the centre the next day, he asked for forgiveness and told them he had “misbehaved and had not slept all night.” He asked the women not to tell anybody, but to hit him instead, which the documents says is “a sign of profound disrespect in Bengali culture.”
Talukder rejected this account in his own testimony, but the judge ruled he was an inconsistent and unreliable witness. He was convicted of sexual assault and sexually touching a person under the age of 14.
The father of two said he never considered closing the Dhaka Learning Centre after his conviction because he believed he was helping students and his Bengali community.
“I already learned a lesson. I am always careful, even like, that my hand doesn’t touch to the student,” Talukder said.
When the Star asked where Talukder’s supervising adult was last Tuesday, he said: “There’s the big guy in the room there,” pointing at one of the six students seated at a desk.
Talukder said the student was 22 and in his second year of university, but when the Star asked the student how old he was, he said 18. Talukder then told the student he was 20, to which the student replied: “Yes, I am 20.”
The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services told the Star it was “inappropriate to comment on the details of any specific case,” including the last time an officer checked in on Talukder or whether his prohibition order was being actively monitored.
Talukder declined to tell the Star if his staff members or the parents of his students were aware of his conviction.
“I don’t have any conviction now. I am free of everything now,” he said.
“Probation is over, but always for my own safety, I always keep the adult person in the room. I am always alert, always alert.”
The Star contacted Talukder on Thursday to ask if the university student was aware of the fact that he was acting as an adult supervisor, but Talukder said he was “not interested to tell anything.”
“I spoke to my lawyer and she said I couldn’t,” Talukder said.
Talukder’s lawyer, Vanessa Christie, did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls from the Star.
Olivia Carville can be reached at ocarville@thestar.ca or on 416 814 2765.
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