'She's a demon': Teacher pleads guilty to sexually assaulting 14-year-old boy

While the victim's parents and two sistersread their victim impact statements,Cowan-Wilsonlooked directly at thembutshowed little emotion, even as they wept.

Court heard details of howCowan-Wilsonused her position of trust to groom and prey upon the boy from September 2013 to September 2014, while she was teachingat Sir Winston Churchill Public School inNepean.

The assault happened after the boy graduated from her Grade 8 class.

Boy was transferred to her class

According to an agreed statement of facts read aloud in court, Cowan-Wilson was the victim's basketball coach for Grade 7 and 8.

In Grade 8shebecame his primary teacher after submitting a request to have him transferred into her class. She would often drive him home from basketball practice and would talk to him about his struggles with depression.

After the victim entered high school,Cowan-Wilsonmet personally with his mother and asked if he could return to Sir Winston Churchill to help her coach basketball.

She's a demon,a nightmare to me, but I see what she truly is now.- Victim, who is now 19 years old

It was during this time, court heard, thatCowan-Wilsonbegan and escalatedhersexual contact with the teenager.

She exchanged hundreds ofsextsand near-naked photos with the boy usingthe texting appSnapChat, and the boy sent sexually explicitphotos of himself to her.Cowan-Wilsontold himshe didn't want either ofthem to share pictures of theirprivate parts until they could be together sexually.

Cowan-Wilson, who was married at the time, fondled the boy in her car whilein a parking lot on several occasions. They did not have intercourse, but she gave him alcohol and told him she loved him.

The former teacher will now be examined by a forensic psychologist, and her sentencing is expected to take placein September.

Her relationship with the boy was discovered after his eldest sister found a love letter fromCowan-Wilsonin the victim's room. His mother filed a complaint with theOttawa Carleton District School Board in January 2015, but the family wouldn't learnthe full extent of the abuse until more than a year later, when a police investigation was initiated.

'I've been through the darkest past,' victim says

In court Fridaythe victim, who is now 19 years old, sat through much of the hour-long proceeding with his head bowed and his hands clasped tightly together, flanked by his parents. His mother and father wrapped their arms around their son as hetrembled and foughtback tears.

All the while his former teacher sat across the aisle, less than five metres away.

The sight ofCowan-Wilsonmade him "feel sick to his stomach," he told CBC Newsafter the hearing, but also asthough a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

"I couldn't have done it without my family or friends who were there.... I've been through the darkest past. I've been through hell," he said, adding that his goalnow isto share his story publicly to help other victims of sexual abuse.

"She's a demon, a nightmare to me, but I see what she truly is now."

Although the victim didn't address Cowan-Wilsonin court, he would describe in detail the impact his former teacher had onthe past five years of his life in a social media post.

He described how he would be overcome by anxiety that he would bump into her each time he stepped out of the house. He expressed forgiveness for the people who initially took her side and expressed his anger on his wall.

"After years of fighting for my life, I finally faced the demon that ruined me and stole my innocence...I may be broken, but I'm alive. I will begin to heal and repair myself and you will be the one that has to face the consequences of what you've done. The world now knows the monster you truly are. You will never again harm me. You will never again harm another child. Through this letter I display my scars for the world to see, so that they will recognize the predator who caused them," he wrote in the post.

'As a mother, Iwas unravelling'

The most emotional victim impact statement read in court Friday came fromthe teen'smother, who explained how she felt when her eldest daughter foundthe birthday card written byCowan-Wilsonthat professed her love for her son.

She spoke about how it hurt her that she had failed to protecther son.

"I remember my initial reaction being a searing pain through my chest. I had missed something. As my head spun and I began to cry, I knewsomethingwas dreadfully wrong.... I was in shock as my girls looked to me for answers that I could not give them. As a mother, I was unravelling," she said.

For more than a year, the teen closed himself off anddidn't tell his family what was wrong. His mother recounted how he became a "shell" of the person he was,and how hewould often disappear for weeks at a time, preferring to couch surf with friends instead of returning home.

"We were his reminders. We also made him talk and would want to hug him, and all those things he didn't want," she said later, outside court.

'We are proud of him,' father says

The teen'smiddle sister, who is 21, described in court how, years ago, she saw her then 16-year-old brother taken away in an ambulance after he had triedto take his own life.

And the eldest sister, who found the love letter, described how the family were walking on egg shells around her brother, and how it was difficult to talk about school and sports because they fearedtriggering his trauma.

The family saidit was only in the last year that the victimgained strength enough to speak openly about his assault.

He and his fatherrecently completed a climb to the top of MountKilimanjaroin Tanzania to raise money for children's mental health services, and his father saidit was a symbolic climb for both of them.

"She preyed upon him,"the victim's father said. "He's an amazing young man in all aspects of life. We are proud of him and that he has gone through all this. He's going to live to see another day and climb another mountain."