Disgraced child-protection lawyer pleads guilty to molesting girl

Coon awaits sex-behaviour assessment, sentencing for exploiting a six-year-old

Former Ottawa child-protection lawyer J.D. Coon told the little girl that he loved her and to keep his advances secret, otherwise he’d get into trouble.

But the little girl didn’t keep it secret and disgraced lawyer John Coon, a.k.a. J.D. Coon, has now pleaded guilty to sexual interference and remains in Ottawa jail awaiting a sex-behaviour assessment and later sentencing for exploiting a six-year-old girl.

Coon was accused of molesting the young girl in 2013 and he fled the country a month before Ottawa police came calling. He went abroad to teach at a children’s school. After living on the lam for five years, Coon turned himself in to Bangkok authorities last summer and returned to Ottawa under police arrest.

The disgraced lawyer pleaded guilty after an agreed statement of facts were read into court on April 1.

Coon, then 49, initially denied the accusations in a September 2013 police interview. Ottawa police then called Coon and asked him to turn himself in on the childsex crimes.

Instead, Coon got a work permit and went to Cambodia, where he got a job as a teacher.

Police sent an officer to his house in January 2014, but Coon had left the country four weeks earlier.

Ottawa police then got a warrant for his arrest and told the press at the time that they feared there could be more victims.

Coon was arrested when he returned to Canada on Aug. 3 on an international flight to Vancouver.

It’s not the first time Coon has pleaded guilty to a sex crime. Coon pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a girl in 1991, but was granted a conditional discharge, which means he was spared a criminal record after 15 months probation.

Though the Law Society knew about his child-sex crime history, Coon was granted a licence to practise law and went on to specialize in child-protection, only to molest another young girl.

Coon revealed to the Law Society back then that he spent a lot of time and money “cruising red-light districts and hiring prostitutes.”

Susan Tonkin, a spokeswoman for the Law Society, told the Ottawa Citizen in 2016 that a criminal record doesn’t preclude someone from getting a licence to practise law in Ontario.

“The Law Society recognizes that people can rehabilitate themselves. A licensing hearing panel is concerned with the ‘present’ and a licensing applicant’s ability to establish that he/she is of good character at the time of the hearing,” she said at the time.

Coon abruptly stopped practising law in late 2013 amid the Ottawa child-sex investigation, fled the country and lived as a fugitive for five years.

His sudden departure from law left some clients in the lurch, including a developmentally delayed man. In that case, another defence lawyer, who is now a judge, filed a pro bono affidavit that said Coon was trying to get the client to plead guilty even though they had maintained his innocence. Coon never bothered to pick up the client’s disclosure, according to court filings.

Coon’s licence has since been revoked. gdimmock@postmedia.com www.twitter.com/crimegarden