Full Disclosure: I reached out to Ryan last night and told him I needed to address it because what we saw was not OK. He replied, “Do what you want with your coverage.”

I asked if the allegations were true, but he hadn’t replied.

So, Here we are.

For the record. This is not OK. What we are seeing and reading is not OK.

Source: The Ontario College of Teachers is holding a disciplinary hearing against a former Newmarket teacher who allegedly sexually harassed students while working for York Catholic District School Board. 

The college has put out a notice of hearing regarding Ryan Imgrund for several breaches of misconduct under the Ontario College of Teachers Act. These alleged breaches include abusing a student psychologically or emotionally and abusing a student sexually. The hearing has yet to be scheduled, with the notice dated Aug. 18.

The breaches have not been tested in a disciplinary hearing or court of law. NewmarketToday has not received a response from Imgrund as of publication time.

The list of allegations said that while on an athletic trip in 2017, Imgrund acted inappropriately toward four students of a girls’ team by engaging in a personal group chat, sending messages to their phones in late hours and asking students to meet him at the pool late at night.

The notice also alleges Imgrund engaged in an inappropriate relationship with one student between 2017 and 2021, which includes personal messages, shirtless photographs of himself, and receiving photographs of the student, including one in her bathing suit.

“If you don’t say I’m good looking, I’ll cry,” the notice of hearing quotes Imgrund as allegedly saying to a student. 

The Newmarket teacher left York Catholic District School Board in March 2021, according to his LinkedIn. After gaining notoriety for his pandemic statistical analysis and appearing in numerous news articles, he became a full-time biostatistician and corporate consultant.

Clinical research organization and consulting firm dicentra hired Imgrund for its science advisory board in November 2021.

The report alleges Imgrund did several other inappropriate things relating to the student with whom he had an inappropriate relationship. These included asking to borrow the student’s shorts to wear on Halloween and asking a guidance counsellor to put the student in his class. 

The notice also alleges him to have taken students on long drives alone in his personal vehicle.

The notice of hearing strikes the students’ names and some of the details of the allegations to protect their identities. 

The date for the hearing has not yet been set. 

If someone is found guilty under the Ontario College of Teachers Act, penalties can include revoking any certificate held under the act and a fine of up to $5,000. If the misconduct includes sexual abuse, the college could also require reimbursement to pay for the therapy of the student victims. 

However, Imgrund resigned from the teachers college June 8.

We’ve interviewed Imgrund numerous times.

We had no idea about his alleged history or what OCT laid out in their release. You can read the OCT Notice Of Hearing with all the details here:

Ontario College of Teachers outlines allegations of against former York Catholic teacher @imgrund
(Disciplinary hearing to follow and these are allegations only at this point.) @YCDSB#onted https://t.co/L72OIKdEXK

— Kristin Rushowy (@krushowy) September 9, 2022

When people started to send us the allegations, I put out a “wait and see” tweet that didn’t cover the severity of the allegations. It was wrong.

We would never have had Ryan on the show if we had known about these allegations.

There were signs of shitty polarizing behavior.

There was a problematic pattern of behavior with Ryan on Twitter. We’re not pals or friends. That’s the only place I engaged with him outside the shows he was on with us.

I addressed his toxic Twitter shit with him, but he didn’t care. We haven’t had him on since we stopped amplifying him and his content months ago. Nothing ever changed with Ryan; we shouldn’t have had him or amplified him.

Yesterday, these allegations of sexual misconduct with his former students came out.

I should have listened to people questioning why we amplified men like him before the allegations.

I got it wrong and added legitimacy to his toxic behavior by not condemning it publicly, as I did privately.

Re these allegations: We’ve never dealt with anything like this before, where sexual assault allegations come from someone we have a loose public relationship with. We will advocate for victims in this process.

That’s not an excuse; it was a lazy way to deflect from something I should have been more sincere in addressing.

Five girls have courageously come forward to tell their stories of abuse, and that’s not a trauma that should be minimized by a “Let’s wait and see” tweet written to blunt hate as I did yesterday.

My only concern today is to champion the truth and get it right.

The last thing we want to do is hurt people or victims of abuse; deflecting the allegations was dismissive. We’re learning and fucked up not listening to others in favor of protecting ourselves when we should be watching and advocating for victims.

We have commented on allegations in the past, and taking a stance against toxic, abusive behavior from men WE KNOW, should be more critical to us. At times it hasn’t for a variety of reasons, and none of them are worth not trying to be better over.

In the future, we WILL listen before making broad statements based on our interests.

That was wrong, and I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for not creating space and being consistent

I’m sorry I amplified Ryan’s stuff. There were others we should have worked with and boosted and did not.

More importantly, I’m sorry if we hurt anyone who’s been victimized and who was triggered by my dismissal of the allegations of Ryan grooming young girls who looked up to him as a coach and teacher.

Saying, “T t’s, not my business,” was bullshit. No one sends shirtless text messages to a minor or asks for texts from minors. It’s all of our business to protect the innocence of kids from people in a position of power.

We need to reassess the content we do, how we operate, and who we associate with, and that starts with m.

We will be better going forward. We are not perfect, and we fuck things up sometimes.

I also shouldn’t have had Mike Bullard on. I feel terrible that Cynthia Mulligan was hurt, and we contributed to her hurt by platforming Mike Bullard in a 3-hour interview last year.

You might find her post relative to the Imgrund stuff, but I do.

There’s no way I can sift through three hours of a show to pick edit lies or address them a year later and don’t know which ‘lies’ Ms. Mulligan is referring to. But the sentiment isn’t lost, considering Imgrund and Bullard behave similarly on Twitter and what I know about Mike and Imgrund TODAY.

Sometimes we get it wrong.

We got it wrong with Imgrund and Bullard. Mike’s behavior over the past year convinced me he wasn’t telling the truth about Cynthia.

I don’t think he is in a good place, and I am sorry our platforming of him last year supported the narrative I no longer believe. We removed it this morning and should not have given Mike a platform without getting her side of the story.

We will do our level best to be consistent in vetting and working with people who have good intentions, are of good character, and act in the common interest of the greater good.

We don’t know what we don’t know, and we need to do our due diligence and be responsible for the t every time, which we will do—accepting what comes with trying to do the right thing and being accountable when we screw up.

In light of these allegations, We’re also removing Imgrund’s appearances from our platform(s).

Instead of quietly deleting shit and pretending this wasn’t happening, I needed to address it and be accountable for all of it.

Ryan snowed us. I believe Mike did too. They snowed a lot of people, news outlets, etc., over the past two years—all of it. My response to it yesterday and any hurt caused by it is on me.

We will amend the harm we may have contributed to, be better about who and what we platform going forward, and live those values ruthlessly.

DB