'The line has already been crossed': Day 4 of Dumba trial sees vastly different accounts from accused, victim

Thursday marked day four of the trial of Jeffrey Dumba, a former Regina teacher who is accused of sexually exploiting a 15-year-old female student.

Dumba is charged with five separate counts of sexual exploitation.

Proceedings began on Thursday with the cross examination of the victim, followed by Dumba taking the witness stand.

The two both shared different recollections of the same events.

Both Dumba and the victim established that a sexual correspondence took place over Snapchat and text messages.

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The accused went on to admit to engaging in sexual correspondence with the victim.

"I remember her sending me nude photos and then me sending nude photos back," Dumba said on the stand.

The victim testified that Dumba invited her to his home "to get intimate.”

"He did ask me to come over on more than one occasion" she told the court.

"There was one time where he sent me his address and another time when he said 'make it happen' and come over on a separate occasion ... He just said 'do not let a friend take you.'"

The defence went on to cross examine points such as whether or not the victim had ever edited images, pursued Dumba intentionally, or made clear that she was a high school student.

"I had told him I was in high school in one of our first conversations," the victim said in response to one of the questions.

The defence went on to heavily scrutinize the timeline of when the victim and the accused discussed the fact that the 15-year-old was in high school.

Throughout the cross examination, the victim remained composed and consistent in her answers.

The significant discrepancies in the two accounts focused on what happened after Dumba realized the victim was a student at the school he was teaching at, and whether or not he was aware she was minor.

"She said she was 20, and she was a student … I thought she was in university," Dumba claimed.

"She didn't look younger than that to me.”

The accused went on to claim that due to masking mandates at the time, he would not have recognized the face of the alleged victim from school.

While the former science teacher denied having any students who were currently enrolled in high school as social media contacts – he did admit he had "only former students" as contacts on Snapchat.

"I remember I got an unfiltered photo of her and was thinking to myself 'that doesn't look like a 20-year-old,’" Dumba said.

Dumba said that he deleted all nude photos of the accused after learning her age, and did not engage in any sexual correspondence after that point.

"She tried over a number of weeks to get me back into this thing we were doing and I just kept saying no," he said.

"She gave me an ultimatum a few times and said 'I always get what I want' and I took that to mean this has gotten way out of hand and I better keep talking to her. [I] was scared of what she might do with this information. Quite frankly I was terrified and I also felt a little bit bad for her to be honest with you, I thought she was troubled," he added.

The victim recalled a very different account of Dumba’s response to learning she was a student where he taught.

"He said, ‘The line has already been crossed, f*** it, let's continue,’" the victim testified.

Dumba went on to confirm that he did message the student before school resumed in September saying “Just be normal at school, don't be weird.”

"I meant ‘Don't be weird, like be normal.’ Don't follow me around and don't – just be normal and then first day of school, her locker was across the hall from my room,” the accused explained.

Following Dumba’s initial questioning, court was adjourned for the day. Proceedings will resume Friday morning for the cross examination of the accused.