Alleged police gang rape paints disturbing picture
‘Women always want to sleep with these two’
Months after his initial police interview, Brad Mills had a realization: It involved a forgotten conversation, on a drunken night, at a strip club and it came to him during a trip to Las Vegas.
The gist of his remembered epiphany was this: The woman who had accused three of his colleagues at the Toronto Police Service of sexual assault had, in fact, wanted to have sex with two of them.
How did Mills know this? Because, he told investigators, “women always want to sleep with these two guys.”
New details of the allegations against Toronto Police officers Joshua Cabero, Leslie Nyznik and Sameer Kara emerged this week after Ontario Superior Court Justice Faye McWatt agreed to lift a publication ban on some documents in the case.
The new i nformation paints a disturbing picture of a horrific, though not proven, crime — a gang sex assault by three men on a female colleague, a parking enforcement officer, who told police she was too drunk to speak or move.
The documents also shed light on the investigation itself. It’s a probe tinged by inevitable conflict, even more so than in the average case where police investigate police.
The alleged assault took place after a police party. The investigators work for the Toronto police. The accused are Toronto police officers. The victim and all 20 witnesses are Toronto police employees. Some, like Mills, are colleagues and friends of the accused.
The province’s independent Special Investigations Unit chose not to intervene, nor did the Toronto police bring in an outside force. Instead, investigators led by Det. Sgt. Jeff Attenborough and Det. Sgt. Mike Leone from the professional standards unit were in charge.
According to summaries of their interviews, the complainant said she was repeatedly assaulted in a hotel room by the three accused after a “rookie party” for officers in 51 Division in January 2015. She was penetrated vaginally and orally while unconscious or nearly so.
She said she did not tell the men to stop “because she was not able to form the words.” She later told a friend she never would have consented to group sex.
Some of the interviews conducted as part of that probe hint at the difficulties inherent to a police investigation of an alleged police-on-police crime.
On the day one of the complainant’s colleagues was scheduled to speak to investigators, for example, she received a call on her per- sonal phone from a man who identified himself as “Gary,” from the association.
“Gary” asked the woman to contact him when she arrived at 51 Division that day. Instead, she called her supervisor, who advised her not to go to 51 Division at all.
Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, said he had no knowledge of the call or who “Gary” might be.
A l awyer named Gary Clewley, who has acted for the police association, represented the accused at their bail hearing in February, 2015. He did not respond to a call for comment this week.
Investigators also spoke to several police officers at the party, including Mills.
In his f i rst i nterview, Mills said he thought the complainant was looking to “hook up” with someone. She was being “overly flirtatious” and “was talking to different males all night.”
More than four months later, he contacted the detectives to report he had remembered a conversation between Nyznik and the complainant about oral sex. Nyznik did not appear interested.
Then, on a trip to Las Vegas with Nyznik and Kara, Mills said he realized Cabero would “do well with the women because he is a goodlooking guy.”
“Mills said that he then thought about what happened at the ( party) and it dawned on him that, ‘ of course ( the complainant) wants to sleep with ( Nyznik and Cabero), women always wanna sleep with these two guys.’ ”
SHE WAS NOT ABLE TO FORM THE WORDS (‘NO’ WHILE DRUNK).