TORONTO, Ontario — A former top education minister in Canada who oversaw the provincial sex-ed curriculum for public school students will plead guilty to charges surrounding child pornography, according to reports.
Benjamin Levin, 62, served as a professor at the University of Toronto and was the Deputy Education Minister for Manitoba and Ontario from 1999-2002 and 2004-2007 respectively. He also served on Premier Kathleen Wynne’s transition team for part of 2013 after Dalton McGuinty resigned. As part of his responsibilities, Levin oversaw the development of the sex-ed curriculum for the provinces.
In 2010, the proposed updated curriculum was dropped after parents expressed concern over its content, as it taught children to question their biological gender, discussed types of sexual activity and spoke positively of “diverse” family settings.
In 2013, Levin was arrested in an international child porn sting, and was charged with accessing and possessing child porn, writing and distributing child porn, counseling a person to commit sexual assault and making an arrangement for a police officer to commit sexual assault. The Harvard graduate was arrested at his home and later released on $100,000 bail.
Levin was then prohibited from using the Internet, nor could he use a phone with the Internet or a camera. He was also banned from being near a child under sixteen years of age nor being near schools or public pools, and may not leave the province except to visit his father.
Last Friday, Levin’s attorney, Clayton Ruby, told reporters that Levin will plead guilty to some of the charges during his next court appearance before Judge Heather McArthur on March 3, although he did not indicate which particular charges he would accept. Ruby also noted that there will be no trial over the matter.
“They’ll probably be a lot more of child-sex charges against sex-ed fanatics over the coming years,” one commenter stated. “Anyone that keen to talk to children about sex has to have something wrong with them.”
Concerns still remain over the updated sex-ed curriculum now overseen by Wynne, whom Levin assisted. Wynne, a lesbian, had stated following Levin’s arrest in 2013 that he did not write the curriculum, but only oversaw its development. But Dr. Charles McVety of Canada Christian College called her statement “just a parsing of words.”
“They can spin it all they like, but this letter proves that Ben Levin and Kathleen Wynne were joined at the hip in the quest to teach these ideas to children as young as six,” he said.
According to reports, the new curriculum, which will be introduced in public schools next year, will teach children about “sexual consent.” Wynne asked the current deputy minister to “finalize a new health and physical education curriculum that gets at some of the root causes of gender inequality, and starts at the very earliest stages to develop an understanding of healthy relationships and consent,” according to the Canadian Star.
Gwen Landolt of REAL Women told reporters that she found the proposed curriculum to be “very worrisome” as it suggests that it is okay to have “access to children, provided the children give their consent.”
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