Longueuil police arrest elementary school teacher for child luring

Longueuil, Que., police are looking for potential victims of a former elementary school teacher who was arrested last week for online luring, among other charges.

Police arrested 37-year-old Kyle Le Huquet on Feb. 27 in the borough of Saint-Hubert, after a female minor from the United Kingdom reported him through Cybertip.ca, the Canadian national tip line for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children. Le Huquet had sent her sexual images, said Longueuil police spokesperson Jacqueline Pierre.

She said police believe there could be more victims. Le Huquet used three usernames on the social media platforms Snapchat and Instagram: The bizzoman, bizzo and bizzo8. 

Pierre said police could not reveal the U.K. girl's age. 

"Even if the youngest victim so far seems to be 13 years old, we never know," she said.

"We need to know if anything happened in that [school] environment or even somewhere else, even at the park — you saw that face, you saw that person having [suspicious] behaviour we need to know."

Le Huquet could communicate with victims in Quebec and abroad in both French and English, Pierre said.

She said victims can call 450-463-7211 to reach investigators.

Since his arrest, Le Huquet has been detained and removed from the school he worked at which has also alerted parents via letters. He made a first court appearance last week and is scheduled for a bail hearing this morning at the Longueuil courthouse.

Pierre said Le Huquet has been charged with luring a child and charges in connection with exchanging sexual photos of a minor.

"If you did not receive a letter that doesn't mean your kid isn't surrounded by these kinds of people," said Pierre, "please sit down with your kid and just give them advice."

She said introducing children to the Cybertip.ca platform is vital so that they know how to report predatory behaviour.

In a statement to Radio-Canada, the school board employing Le Huquet, Centre de services scolaire Marie-Victorin, confirmed he had been removed from the school environment, but did not say whether he was still employed with them.

Le Huquet's arrest was part of the larger national child exploitation operation Project Steel, which produced over a hundred arrests. Of those, 30 suspects were arrested in Quebec, four of which were in Longueuil, according to provincial police.

So far, 26 people have been charged in Quebec while four are still being investigated, said Sûreté du Québec Sgt. Katherine Guimond in a news conference Wednesday. The suspects are between 19 and 76 years old, she said.