PSB says it only connected Craswell incidents in P.E.I. schools after his 1st arrest

The director of P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch says the organization only connected two classroom incidents involving Matthew Alan Craswell after he was arrested on unrelated child pornography charges last summer.

Tracy Beaulieu sat down with CBC News for an interview Tuesday for the first time since Craswell pleaded guilty to sexual touching at Stratford's Glen Stewart Primary, as well as child pornography offences, last week. 

"Once we found out about the charges that were in place for Mr. Craswell, we went and looked into our records to see, was there anything that we had? And it did unfold that there was an investigation done in April [2024]," Beaulieu told CBC News.

"At that moment in time we thought 'we need to notify police.'"

Craswell, 40, originally faced only child pornography charges related to possession and distribution after he used the messaging app Kik to send images depicting child sex abuse that were flagged by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States.

CBC News reached out to the PSB at that time to confirm that the Matthew Craswell who was charged was the same one who was advertising himself online as a P.E.I. substitute teacher.

The charges related to the Glen Stewart incident were laid in the following days.

"There was another incident that came up and we realized we need a centralized tracking system," Beaulieu said.

"If the information would have been in a centralized location, we might have identified trends in that and looked at things a little bit differently."

The first report known to CBC of Craswell's behaviour was at a school in June 2023.

Little is known about this event, but sources told CBC News it happened at a Charlottetown-area elementary school. 

Beaulieu said the incident was investigated, but would not share details for privacy reasons. 

"We had not had any information at that point in time through the investigation that happened to suggest that there was malicious intent by Matthew Craswell," Beaulieu said. "There would have been an investigation that involved statements from parents, and statements from students and staff, and that was the decision that was made at the time.

"However, now we hear quite a different story and that's what's really difficult."