Former VSB janitor sentenced to 90 days in jail for sex crime against student

A former Vancouver School Board custodian has been sentenced to 90 days in jail to be served intermittently on weekends.

Last November, Joel Aguirre Gumban, 45, pleaded guilty to invitation to sexual touching of a person under the age of 16 relating to an incident at a Vancouver high school in the fall of 2014.

According to court documents, Gumban had been working at the school less than a week when he first approached a group of students, singling out a 14-year-old boy who spoke a shared dialect, eventually giving the boy his phone number.

A day later, Gumban approached the boy again and showed him a lewd picture on his cellphone.

A short time later, Gumban called the boy away from his study group, this time asking him for sexual favours and inviting him to the washroom.

In asking for the 90 day sentence, Crown highlighted four aggravating factors:

• As a VSB employee he was in a position of trust and authority.
• The offence was premeditated and involved grooming.
• The victim was a child.
• As a result of the offence, the victim has experienced paranoia, insecurity, sleep disturbances, anxiety and depression.

The pre-sentencing and psychiatric report filed by the defence noted that Gumban grew up in the Philippines in a conservative and devout Catholic family where "he was unable to be open about himself with his family and was unable to discuss his sexual attraction to both men and women."

In her decision, Judge Jodie Werier described Gumban as a "sympathetic offender," with no criminal record who is hard working and married with two small children.