The Hongcouver | Teacher who had sex with pupils in Canada ended up at prestigious Chinese school

More than 40 years after he was caught having sex with pupils in Canada, teacher Robert John Robertson’s past has caught up with him in China.

Robertson resigned from the prestigious Beijing Huijia Private School on Friday after Canadian media reported on his new life in China, where he had been teaching physical education and communications and coaching girls in volleyball, soccer and softball.

The 66-year-old was finally banned from teaching in Canada last year after regulators ruled that in 1976 he had sex with three schoolgirls. But authorities had been investigating him for years. Separate probes were launched by the Richmond School Board in 1976 and the British Columbia College of Teachers (BCCT) in 2006, but on both occasions Robertson resigned while the investigations were incomplete. In 2008 he went to China to teach.

In an extraordinary rebuttal, Robertson told the South China Morning Post on Saturday he had done “nothing wrong” and suggested Huijia knew about his past. He depicted one victim of what he called his “indiscretions” as a “psycho-sexual predator”. She was aged 15 when they started having sex.

Robertson also forwarded emails of support, purportedly from Chinese pupils, that included their names and email addresses. The SCMP did not solicit the emails and has not tried to contact the children, apparently aged as young as 13.