Former high school teacher Shannon Marie Quinn has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation after admitting to sex crimes against two 17-year-old students.
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Quinn, also known as Shannon Greffe, was 40 at the time of the sexual offences against the two minors and was employed as a teacher at St. Francis Xavier High School in Gloucester.
She pleaded guilty in an Ottawa courtroom on Jan. 22 where she was represented by criminal defence lawyer Sean May.
Ontario Court Justice Michael Boyce authorized the release of an agreed statement of facts entered into the court record by Crown attorney Stephen Albers to support Quinn’s guilty plea.
The judge reinforced a strict publication ban that prohibits any information that could identify the youth victims.
According to the agreed statement of facts, Quinn had been teaching for 20 years at the time. She started chatting with the first youth victim over lunch and “started to discuss issues in her personal life… in particular issues with her ex-boyfriend.”
She sent the youth a direct message on Instagram and the two began to exchange text messages. Those messages became “flirtatious” after a few weeks.
She texted the first victim while he was in class one day and asked if he wanted to come over to her house at 8 p.m. that night. He went to a friend’s house and Quinn picked him up there, according to the agreed facts.
Quinn gave the teenager a tour of her house that ended in the bedroom, where Quinn showed him her shoe collection and the two sat on her bed.
“They began flirting and touching, but nothing more at that point,” according to the agreed facts. Quinn then told him, “Is that how you shoot your shot?”
They began kissing and taking off their clothes and then had oral and penetrative sex, according to the agreed facts.
Three weeks later, Quinn sent the same youth text messages arranging to pick him up at a meeting spot “some distance away” from his house. They again had sex, and afterward, the youth received a call from the second youth victim.
Quinn drove to pick up the second youth and the three went back to Quinn’s house. She repeated the same house tour with the second youth that again ended in her bedroom.
The three laid down on the bed, Quinn started kissing and touching both boys and then had oral sex and intercourse with both youths.
About a month later, Quinn texted the first youth and asked to meet him. The youth and Quinn drove to a parking lot in Riverside South, where they had sex in the back seat of the car.
Quinn later sent the boy a text message asking, “So is that all we’re doing is using each other to f—?”
The youth became “less responsive” after that text. Quinn sent him 32 unanswered text messages in the next four days until he finally replied and asked for “time alone.”
Quinn exchanged “thousands” of text messages with the youth during the five-month period, and many “are the kind one would expect in a romantic relationship,” according to the agreed facts. “At times she seeks solace from (the first victim) when things are not going well in her life, at other times she is flirtatious, and still other times she expresses jealousy after finding out (the youth) has been hanging out with girls his own age.”
Quinn sent five more messages after their relationship ended, where she told the youth “she missed him and missed seeing him every day.”
He never replied. She was arrested a month later.
Quinn was initially released under strict bail conditions, but she was re-arrested on Dec. 10, 2024 and her bail was revoked after she attended a minor hockey arena without the presence of a surety.
According to the conditions of her bail, Quinn was ordered to post a $2,000 bond and live with her parents as court-approved sureties, who each posted matching bonds of $2,000.
She had been under a strict curfew and was ordered not to be anywhere in the presence of children under age 16 without her surety.
She has remained in custody since her bail was revoked on Dec. 19, 2024.
Quinn is due back in court in March for a pre-sentence hearing.
“Following the charges, Ms. Quinn was immediately placed on leave by the Ottawa Catholic School Board. Prior to entering her guilty plea, she resigned from the board and is no longer an OCSB employee,” OCSB officials said in a statement.
A notice of her criminal charges was posted to her professional profile at the Ontario College of Teachers, where she is listed as Shannon Greffe. She has been listed as “inactive/non-practising” since April 2024.