Regina teacher accused of sex offences says in court he did not realize he was messaging a young student

WARNING: This story contains disturbing details.

Regina high school teacher Jeffrey Dumba testified in court Thursday that he stopped sending sexually explicit messages to a girl when he realized she was a 15-year-old student.

Dumba, 52, is on trial in the Court of King’s Bench in Regina, where he pleaded not guilty to five charges, including soliciting a minor to engage in sexual contact, distributing sexually explicit material to a minor and possession of child pornography.

Earlier this week, his trial heard testimony from a girl who claims a messaging relationship with Dumba in 2021 eventually led to an exchange of explicit photos and videos.

The identity of the youth, who was 15 years old at the time of the alleged crimes, is subject to a publication ban.

On Thursday afternoon, Dumba took the stand as the defense’s first witness, describing how he began messaging the teenager in the summer of 2021 and how those conversations evolved.

Dumba told the court he did not know the teenager during the 2020-21 school year because he did not teach her. He also noted that students were required to wear masks that school year. He said he may have interacted with her in a colleague’s class, but denied any physical contact with her.

The teenager had previously testified that Dumba hugged her at the end of the school year and occasionally spoke to her at school.

Dumba said he was “hanging out” in his backyard that summer, “drinking and doing drugs.” He said this happened a few times a week. He also said he shared intimate images with five or six women that summer.

He said he could not remember the teenager adding him as a contact on the social media platform Snapchat and said he added her anyway, even though he did not know who she was.

Dumba said that in the past, students had tried to add him as a contact, but it was not accepted.

“I have a really bad feeling”: Dumba

He testified that the girl told him she was 20 and a “student,” which he said meant she was attending secondary school.

“In the pictures I saw, she looked 20,” Dumba said.

The first messages were about “normal, everyday things,” but over time they became sexual in nature, he explained in court.

“I remember her sending me nude photos and me sending her nude photos, probably through Snapchat,” he testified. “I saw a picture of her face and thought, ‘That doesn’t look like a 20-year-old at all.'”

Dumba said he was worried the girl might be a high school student.

“I had a bad feeling – ‘Oh my God. What if this person goes (to his school)?'” he testified. CBC is not naming the school to protect the girl’s identity.

Dumba said he sent her a message saying: “You knew who I was all along, didn’t you?” She replied: “I don’t know,” he told the court.

He said he invited her over on July 15 “to get intimate,” but he didn’t know who she was at the time.

Teenager tried to continue conversation, Dumba testifies

He said he stopped sending her nude photos and engaging in sexual conversations when he realized she was a student.

“I said, ‘That’s not me. I can’t do this,'” he testified. The teen responded by expressing sadness and trying “multiple times” to continue the sexual conversations, Dumba said.

He said in court that he had deleted the nude photos and all text messages from his phone by the end of August.

When asked by his lawyer Darren Kraushaar why he deleted the messages, Dumba replied: “Panic.”

The 15-year-old gave him “an ultimatum,” said Dumba.

“I was afraid of what she might do with this information. I was terrified. I felt sorry for her.”

He said he sent the teenager a message before school started in September, urging her to “behave normally” at school.

The girl testified in court earlier this week that she interacted with Dumba in the hallway and in his classroom on the first two days of school.

Dumba said her locker was near his classroom and he may have spoken to her on the first day of school.

On September 3, 2021, the third day of school, Dumba was arrested by the Regina Police Department’s vice squad in a Walmart parking lot.

When Kraushaar asked how he felt when he was arrested, Dumba replied: “I don’t think there is a word for it in the English language.”

“Something that goes beyond terrorism. At first I thought I was arrested for drugs.”

Teenager is cross-examined

On Thursday morning, the teenager returned to the witness stand for the third day in a row while Kraushaar continued his cross-examination.

The focus of the survey was July 15, 2021, which, according to Kraushaar, was the day when everything “unraveled.”

He asked the teenager if Dumba had invited her to his house for sex that day and then realised who she was. The teenager objected, saying she had been invited on other occasions but only once had he sent his address.

Kraushaar asked why there was a screenshot of part of the conversation on her phone but not the entire conversation.

“I suggest that you took this screenshot because this is a significant day for you because it was the day he found out who you were,” Kraushaar said. The teenager contradicted this statement.

The teenager said she sent him unsolicited nude photos after that day.

Kraushaar also claimed that Dumba became “cold” in his messages to her after July 15, which the teenager also denied.

The trial, presided over by Judge Neil Robertson, began on Monday and is scheduled to last a week, continuing on Friday.