D avid Dewees died an innocent man.

Maybe that's reason enough to take one's own life – there will never be a finding of guilt on the criminal charges brought against the apparently well-liked Jarvis Collegiate teacher.

But was it guilt of another kind, shame and self-loathing, that made the 32-year-old lie down on the tracks at High Park subway station Saturday morning rather than face trial?

Such a sad tale all around and now students and colleagues, to say nothing of Dewees' family, will have to deal with the consequences. That's also the aftermath of suicide: Anger, a need to cast or shirk blame, questions without answers and the taint of cowardliness.

It is a moot issue, whether suicide is an act of cowardice or courage. Police won't confirm details on the incident, as a matter of policy on suicides. But if Dewees really did lie prone on the rails and wait for an oncoming train to mangle his body, condemning himself to those moments of terrifying anticipation, then he embraced a worse comeuppance than any retribution the courts could impose. This was a ritualistic punishment, a self-mutilation.

At the same time, Dewees shunted the guilt to others: any victim who lodged a complaint, cops who investigated his alleged crimes and laid the charges, the media for publishing his name.

Our law affords no protection from libel to the dead. So we will assume by his actions, and for the purpose of exploring this awful event, that Dewees was guilty as charged; that the Grade 10 English and Latin teacher and volunteer camp counsellor did indeed invite sexual touching – as opposed to actual touching – from boys, luring them on the Internet. Police said he'd been removed from his counselling post at the Christian-based Ontario Pioneer Camp in Port Sydney, Ont., after the emails surfaced.

He was charged on Thursday, out on $25,000 bail.

The Star, it must be acknowledged, got the charges wrong in a Friday digest item that said Dewees had been charged with sexually assaulting two 13-year-olds. There was no assault alleged by police. The distinction is important though it's doubtful – this too can never be ascertained – such an error (corrected) had much impact on Dewees' state of mind.

Some, who knew Dewees, will not accept even the news merit of the story, seeing in the straightforward reporting a malice that didn't exist. In an email to the Star, one associate wrote: "I worked with this totally decent man at Jarvis Collegiate for several years. It was sickening enough to see the police toss the `innocent until proven guilty' concept out the window by publishing his photo before any legal proceedings had begun. It is disgusting to see that your newspaper gleefully contributed to the damn-the-facts sensationalism."

There was no sensationalism. Neither the Star nor the police treated the incident differently from any other charge that appears on a cop blotter. This is a public record. The police and the media cannot make allowances of sensitivity for an accused.

From all reports, including comments posted on social networking sites, Dewees was a gifted teacher who made learning even so arcane a subject as Latin a lively endeavour. He blew the dust off a dead language. "I don't know which was funnier – when he made up the `Senex Salvius fundum habebat' song to the tune of Old MacDonald on the spot or `domus ambulans' as the Latin word for RV," one student wrote on RateMyTeachers.com. "What a character."

Another posted: "Mr. Dewees reads poetry with the most passion and enthusiasm I've ever witnessed."

Clearly, Dewees had a positive influence on the lives of many students. Some reject outright the idea that he would have sexually interfered with young teenage boys, suggesting a misunderstanding had occurred or that he had been enticed into making a sexual approach.

In fact, it is just this high esteem and loyalty in which Dewees was held by those in his charge that makes the accusation so distressing. And surely Dewees knew that as he orchestrated the final tragic act in his life.

His kink, a sexual attraction to boys, was the nub of the thing and it was out there in the public domain. His reputation was in ruins, even if many students still admired and respected the guy. In the way of these matters, that reputation would not have been resurrected either, in the event of acquittal.

A sexual compulsion for minors is hard-wired in the brain. There's little Dewees could have done to alter his thoughts. While it may be a perversion, fantasizing about sex with children isn't a crime. But acting on those urges is (despite a small constituency of deviants that seeks to take the moral sting out of "intergenerational sex"), even to the extent of owning child pornography. Thus the possession and importing child porn charges laid Friday against 69-year-old Antigonish bishop Raymond Lahey, just two weeks after his diocese reached a $15 million settlement with individuals who said they were abused by priests as children. (Lahey was not implicated in that case.)

If Dewees was aroused by boys, prudence demanded he put himself far from temptation, although there's really no such thing as safe distance in an online universe. Yet he taught pubescent boys and volunteered at a youth camp. He was a figure of trust and authority. That was his betrayal.

In death, with all its deliberate melodrama, Dewees can be pitied. Perhaps he preferred that to scorn. But Dewees was the author of his own torment because he surely knew the danger of such inappropriate conduct as alleged. This was not some romanticized Dead Poets Society. He was flirting with public exposure and disaster.

It must have both thrilled and sickened him.

Now, he's the only one at peace.





Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.