A B.C. high school teacher has been banned from his profession for seven years after he was caught arranging to meet with someone who presented as a 14-year-old on the dating app Grindr. Carlo Deni Pavan admitted to the misconduct in a consent agreement he recently signed with the province’s commissioner for teacher regulation. He was working for the Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district when he initiated the Grindr conversation in March 2023, according to the document. The agreement details how Pavan was ensnared in an amateur sting apparently styled after the cancelled reality TV show “To Catch a Predator.” “The youth was not a real person but an adult man … posing as the youth in an attempt to ‘catch’ persons he suspects to be predators,” it reads. Chat transcripts quoted in the document show Pavan asking, “What brings you on Grindr?” and the other user replying, “Well I’m 14 so friends and maybe more idk.” Pavan later asks, “Do you have any more pics?” and suggests they meet for a walk at 12:30 a.m. that night. At one point, Pavan is quoted explaining why he doesn’t want to send a picture of himself: “Too risky … There’s like vigilantes and cops.” After several more conversations over the course of four days, the two agreed to meet after 10 p.m. on March 18. Pavan was ultimately confronted on camera by someone who uploaded the video to Facebook. The consent agreement notes the teacher was fired that June, and a subsequent investigation was launched into his misconduct. Commissioner Donnaree Nygard ultimately decided to cancel Pavan’s teaching certificate and impose a seven-year ban on his re-certification. Among the factors Nygard considered was that Pavan’s behaviour “undermined the public’s confidence in the education system,” according to the document. “In communicating with the youth in the manner that he did, and in asking to meet with the youth alone at night, Pavan failed to maintain appropriate boundaries,” the agreement reads. On top of the ban, Pavan agreed “not to make any statement orally or in writing which contradicts, disputes or calls into question” the findings of the investigation.
