Sex crime charges laid against fugitive Ottawa lawyer

OTTAWA — A disgraced Ottawa lawyer turned fugitive wanted for sex crimes against the child of a former client is now in custody after more than five years on the lam.

John David Coon, a one-time criminal defence and family lawyer, abruptly stopped practising law late in 2013 amid an Ottawa police sexual assault investigation. In July of that year, Ottawa cops had started probing an alleged assault on a child.

By January of 2014, sex crime detectives had a warrant for his arrest, believing Coon, then 49, had sexually assaulted a fouryear-old girl – the daughter of one of his clients.

But by then, police believe, he had already fled the country — maybe to Cambodia or Thailand.

Over the long weekend, Coon was arrested at the Ottawa airport on Saturday and appeared in court Sunday.

Coon was called to the Ontario Bar in 2006 and he had a combined child protection defence and criminal defence practice.

In February 2016, while still wanted on the charges for which he is now in jail, Coon officially had his licence to practise law revoked by the Law Society of Upper Canada.

According to the Law Society, Coon, who ran a practice specializing in child protection, engaged in professional misconduct by failing to co-operate with multiple Law Society investigations. That ruling revealed a history of sexual misconduct, and even a previous conviction for sexually assaulting a child.

In 2014, the Law Society had suspended his licence after a complaint from the Children’s Aid Society. Coon, at the time, was already under investigation by the regulatory body after a female client alleged that she had sex with the lawyer in his office.

Law Society documents related to that suspension also revealed that Coon was given a licence to practise law in Ontario despite a history that included a prior criminal conviction for sexually assaulting a child.

According to the documents, Coon revealed in 2004 to the Law Society that he had been convicted of sexually assaulting a friend’s 12-year-old daughter in 1991.

Coon was given a conditional discharge and 15 months probation, meaning he wouldn’t have a criminal record if he followed his court-ordered conditions and lived a law-abiding life.

Coon also told the Law Society that in the late 1980s he was attending a 12-step group program to address the “inordinate amount of time and money he spent cruising red light districts and hiring prostitutes.”

Coon is charged with sexual assault, sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching.

He had remained one of Ottawa police’s most wanted.

He is next scheduled to appear in court Wednesday.