The Nova Scotia Supreme Court trial for Bridgewater’s former police chief continued on Wednesday as witnesses chronicled a trail of “inappropriate” Facebook messages between John William Collyer and a teenage girl.
Collyer, a career police officer, stands accused of both sexual assault and sexual exploitation of a 17-year-old girl back in 2016.
Two witnesses — the complainant’s mother and a family friend — testified that they found sexual messages sent from Collyer on the teen’s Facebook account.
Screenshots were taken to document the messages; they were then shown to the family doctor.
As per the doctor’s testimony, he felt the messages were “inappropriate” and took the information to the Lilydale RCMP detachment; the Serious Incident Response Team was later contacted to start an investigation into Collyer’s conduct.
When questioned by Collyer’s lawyer, David Bright, as to why he alerted the police and not the teen’s mother, the doctor said she didn’t know what to do with the information.
There were 34 pages of screenshots provided to investigators.
SIRT INVESTIGATION
But the screenshots were only a fraction of the messages between Collyer and the teen.
Sgt. Gord Vail, SIRT’s lead investigator on the case, testified that his team found nearly 600 messages during the course of their investigation.
Upon meeting the mother and daughter, Vail said he notified Collyer he was under investigation on Aug. 5, 2016 and disclosed the allegations at that time.
The investigative team then proceeded to secure warrants to search the accused’s home and office, which took place on Aug. 15.
Vail said computers, tablets and other devices were seized and ultimately, returned.
However, Collyer’s work phone was reported lost before it could be seized.
Crown attorney Roland Levesque asked Vail several questions about the missing phone to which he replied that he believed it to be of “critical” value to the investigation.
The missing cellphone has not been located.
DELETED FACEBOOK MESSAGES
Vail explained that he filed, with the assistance of Nova Scotia prosecutors, an MLAT — a type of international information agreement — requesting access to Collyer’s and the teen’s Facebook messaging history.
The request was processed by the Department of Justice in Ottawa and eventually sent to Facebook’s offices in California in what Vail described as a “long and arduous process.”
Vail said the investigative team decided not to proceed with charges until they received the records, which they did on April 27, 2017.
The request revealed 596 messages between the accused and complainant from April 2015 until August 2016.
When reviewing the accounts, explained Vail, it was discovered that all but 60 messages had been deleted but the data couldn’t answer when the messages were erased.
And there was a significant difference between the deleted messages and those left; Vail testified that many of the deleted messages were inappropriate in nature.
Levesque read out several messages in court which called the teen “hot” and referenced “dirty limericks.”
Vail said all messages had been deleted from the teen’s phone.
ADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE
Justice Mona Lynch ultimately decided the deleted messages and other missing evidence were admissible.
Levesque argued that given Collyer’s policing background, he knew that investigators would want his phone and messaging history, stating it was no coincidence the phone was lost days after Vail visited the accused.
However, Bright said there was no proof his client deliberately destroyed evidence; Lynch ruled the evidence admissible after less than an hour of deliberation.
Speaking to reporters, Levesque stressed the importance of the deleted messages.
“The screenshots that were captured only consists of 34 pages,” he said.
“It’s a minute part of the Facebook messages between Mr. Collyer and the complainant. Obviously, we were interested in obtaining the entirety of the correspondence between these two parties.”
And although he wouldn’t give his opinion of the exchanges between the accused and complainant, Levesque did offer that the witnesses who have testified so far have said they are inappropriate.
The trial began on Monday and is set to continue Thursday morning.
Collyer pleaded not guilty at the beginning of the trial.
