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Outside court, after regaining her composure, the boy’s mother told Postmedia: “It has been traumatizing for my son and I, waiting for almost two years for her to be sentenced, but mostly the duration and intensity of her sexual obsession with my son. We want to put this past us. What she did to us cannot be undone.”

Her son had always struggled in class, so when he met Kitts, he was grateful. She would, he felt, guide him through to graduation day. She helped him with his homework and he trusted her.

But a year later, things took a rapid turn, the boy said, and he felt like he had to have sex with her for fear she’d fail him.

“I had no choice but to agree. If I said no, she wouldn’t help me with homework and I would fail,” he wrote in a victim-impact statement filed at the Ottawa court.

The boy said he had never felt so alone, and that he stopped seeing friends for fear they’d learn his awful, dirty secret. Kitts had told the boy to keep it secret and that if he told anyone her life would be ruined and she could end up in jail, according to the agreed statement of facts entered after the teacher’s aide pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation.

“She would stalk me all the time,” the boy wrote in his victim-impact statement. He said Kitts destroyed his innocence and that he worries that he’ll never love someone.

The boy has trouble talking about it, and said writing his impact statement for all to hear was like torture.