Ex-top cop guilty of sexual exploitation
Teen girl with mental health issues targeted
BRIDGEWATER, N.S. • A former police chief in Nova Scotia who was described in court as a “father figure” to a 17-year-old girl with mental health issues was convicted Thursday of sexually exploiting the teen.
Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Mona Lynch said John Collyer was the head of the Bridgewater Police Service in 2016 when he groomed the girl for a sexual relationship and later sexually assaulted her in his car.
Court heard Collyer became a mentor to the girl when she and her family moved to Bridgewater in southwestern Nova Scotia. She was 12 at the time and Collyer was deputy chief.
Over the years, Collyer and his wife, Sheri, spent a great deal of time with the family, offering them emotional and financial support.
As well, Collyer took the girl to appointments, on shopping trips and sometimes to a nearby beach.
The Crown argued his relationship with the girl changed as she got older, developing into a sexual interest he expressed through online conversations.
“John Collyer denied any sexual interest in the complainant,” Lynch said, but she found that messages on Facebook told a different story.
Records obtained from Facebook showed that between April 2015 and August 2016, Collyer’s Facebook account included 596 messages between him and the complainant. However, 536 of them had been deleted by the time the province’s police watchdog agency started investigating in August 2016.
The judge said the intent of the messages was clear.
The victim, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, was present in the courtroom with her mother as the decision was read. Her medical records, which were admitted as evidence, show she had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.
In Collyer’s trial last summer, a psychiatrist testified that in 2016 the girl had an intellectual and emotional age of between 10 and 12 years old.
Five days after Collyer learned he was under investigation, the police chief reported that he had lost his cellphone. It was never found. Lynch said it was reasonable to conclude Collyer had disposed of the cellphone to avoid recovery of its messages.
The 26-year veteran of the police force was originally charged in May 2017 with sexual assault and two counts of sexual exploitation, but one of the sexual exploitation charges was withdrawn. He was suspended from the force. He was tried on one count of sexual assault and one of sexual exploitation. Lynch found him guilty of both crimes, but she ordered a conditional stay on the sexual-assault conviction based on the principle that an accused cannot be convicted of two offences arising from the same actions.