WARNING: This article can affect those who have experienced sexual violence or knowing someone affected by him.
The Canadian Military Police manipulated the evidence, showed prejudices and acted beyond the reach of their jurisdiction during an investigation, with the “atrocious” misconduct that a judge of the Superior Court of Ontario remained aggression and charges of sexual aggression against an active active member of the Canadian Armed Forces ((CyF).
In a decision earlier this month, the judge of the Superior Court of Ontario, Cynthia Petersen, of Brampton, said that a stay was a “drastic” but necessary measure in the case because the actions of the Military Police finally violated the charter rights of the member not to be deprived of his freedom and security of his person, except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
The decision was issued only a few days before the jury selection and the trial of the active member of the CAF, which faced four positions of sexual assault and a position of aggression, which implies incidents that supposedly occurred from 2007 to 2011.
In his written decision, Petersen criticized the National Research Service of Canadian Forces (CFNIS), stating that his misconduct “in this case is so atrocious and systemic that he surprises the consciousness of the community.”
During the testimony prior to the trial, he pointed out that the researchers made numerous attempts to “hide, minimize and rationalize their misconduct.”
In a statement, a spokesman for the Marshal provost office of the Canadian forces, which supervises the CFNIS, said that he respects the decision taken in this case and that the Office of Professional Standards of the CAF has launched its own investigation.
Canada’s Minister of Defense says that changes in the law that governs military justice will come in a matter of months, luckily by the end of 2023. The changes will transfer all cases that involve military sexual aggression to civil courts.
The Complaints of the Military Police, the Civil Supervision Agency, did not confirm whether he had received a complaint about this matter, but said he was “deeply concerned about the conclusions of the Court.”
Edmonton’s defense lawyer, Austin Corbett, said he is “gratified by the decision” and that his client is considering possible legal actions against the CFNIS.
The Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario, which represents the crown in this case, did not confirm whether he intended to appeal the decision.
The investigation began in 2021
According to the undisputed facts in this case, the CFNIS launched an investigation in 2021 after the plaintiff, a reservist, reported 13 years of intimate couple violence to the Military Police in Edmonton.
The decision describes the initial reports of the plaintiff, in which she described her husband as physical and verbally abusive. She said he threatened to kill her twice and reported several violent altercations. The reservist said that “he never strangled or raped,” but said he often drank alcohol to feel comfortable interacting with her husband, who frequently looked for sex with her.
She characterized these experiences as “routine” and “part of a cycle of anger and abuse.”
The decision also indicates that the couple has been separated since then and was involved in a custody battle during the same period that the Military Police carried out their investigation into the alleged abuse.
Alberta Military Police officers arrested and accused the defendant of two assault positions months after the initial report, but Alberta’s crown finally withdrew those charges.
The Military Police continued to investigate the accusations that are said to occur while the couple lived in Ontario. The CFNIS is authorized to investigate and charge a person for alleged crimes while they are members of or at a CAF base.
In this case, the couple met in 2007 as civilians while living in Ontario and moved to Alberta in 2013, when the defendant joined the army, according to the undisputed facts included in the judge’s decision. The defendant was finally arrested by Alberta Military Police officers in May 2022 and accused of four positions of sexual assault and a position of aggression in relation to the crimes that were assumed that occurred in Ontario.
During their testimony prior to the trial, the investigators argued that the accusations of abuse, which covered 13 years in the two provinces, fell under the jurisdiction of CFNIS because they were part of “a single continuous pattern of offense” and could not be handled separately .
However, the judge put on the side of the defense, which argued that the service had no right to investigate or present charges in Ontario because the alleged abuse occurred before the husband joined the military.
The investigators continued their work despite an announcement by the Minister of National Defense in November 2021 that the accusations of criminal crimes of a sexual nature must be delivered to the civil police forces.
The Military Police showed prejudices, says the judge
In Petersen’s decision, he writes how the officers involved admitted “taking action during the investigation that were different from everything they had done in some other case.” All were made to benefit the plaintiff, particularly in the battle of concurrent custody between her and the defendant, the judge wrote.
The three researchers agreed to interviews by a psychologist for a parenting evaluation as part of the family court procedures.
“They did it voluntarily, despite knowing that CAF’s policy dictates that they should not get involved in matters of the family courts,” Petersen wrote. In doing so, they also disseminated confidential information about the case.
At one time, the officers delivered a forensic copy of the plaintiff’s cell phone records, which included not only the original data found in the device but also additional information, including the messages deleted from her husband. The judge pointed out that this could have been used as evidence against the plaintiff in the Family Court.
At his request, an officer also analyzed whether there were pending investigations on the plaintiff’s conduct by the Military Police or the RCMP, although he later testified in hearings prior to the trial that “this was not a standard CFNIS practice.”
Petersen put on the side of the defense, stating that a particular researcher developed a “cozy” and “problematic” relationship with the plaintiff, which was not “to maintain a professional distance.”
The decision details how this researcher provided the plaintiff free tickets for a basketball game and helped her rebuild a cat left by the accused, while maintaining frequent correspondence and outside the record.
Petersen wrote all these actions “demonstrate a bias in favor of the plaintiff.”
Non -documented discussions correctly
Petersen also wrote that the researchers “systematically failed” in their duty to preserve and reveal relevant evidence in the case.
The judge pointed out that military officers knew defective recording teams during witness interviews. Repeatedly, he could not properly document the relevant discussions and meetings with each other and the plaintiff on the investigation.
At one point, an investigator “led the plaintiff to beautify or recoverize his accusations of sexual crimes during a follow -up interview.”
“In his previous statements, you said that [your husband] I was not taking a not by response and that there were between three or four times that you described … some kind of non -consensual sex occurred, “says a segment of the transcription of that interview.
The plaintiff responded with new accusations, including non -consensual oral sex, as well as vaginal and anal sex.
Petersen described this as “in the best case, unacceptable police negligence, and in the worst, intentional police behavior designed to cause a different statement from the plaintiff of what she originally provided to the Military Police.”
The judge suggested that this was done because the investigators did not agree with the decision of the Alberta crown not to present positions of sexual crimes based on the original statement and hoped to avoid a similar result in Ontario “unless they obtained a more accused declaration. “
It was discovered that another correspondence, such as telephone calls and text messages between an officer and the plaintiff, was retained during the dissemination, in which the parties are legally obliged to deliver all the relevant tests in one case.
When the missing messages were asked for, a researcher “destroyed the original evidence in his possession,” citing a technical malfunction, according to the decision.
The “lack of understanding of the officers of the scope of their legal duty to document and reveal all communications with the plaintiff … is deeply worrying,” Petersen wrote.
Calls to transparency, public research
Following the Petersen ruling, legal experts express serious concerns about CFNI’s operations and implications for military justice.
“Many things were missing,” said Corbett, the defense lawyer in this case, on the evidence.
“He took months of work and repeated requests to the Office of the Prosecutor of the Corona and the Crown Prosecutor to the Police to slowly join many of the missing pieces.”
He said that he and his client were also deeply concerned about the behavior of the researchers, who “put their thumb on the scale of justice regarding the procedures of the Family Court.”
The retired colonel Michel Drapeau, an expert in military law, expressed his astonishment for the level of misconduct.
“I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Drapeau is among the growing number of voices who ask for a public investigation into the operations of the Military Police in Canada. He said that this case is just another reason why one is necessary.
“In how many other cases have these individuals been involved?”
Rory Fowler, a retired legal officer with headquarters in Kingston, Ontario, said that the misconduct of the Military Police is not a new problem, but called the magnitude in this particular case unprecedented.
“What this case represents is an abject example of a failure in the course of many years to hold investigators for misconduct, so it is repeated.”
The call was echoed for a public investigation, a necessary step, he said, towards transparency and systemic change in Canada’s military operations.
The support is available for anyone who has been sexually assaulted through local support lines and services through this website of the Canada Government or the Database of the Association of Violence of Canada. If you are in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, call 911.
