One massive buy, rung up with out permission on her mom’s bank card.
It hadn’t taken a lot to land a Bowmanville teenager inside a Durham Regional police interview room, on their lonesome with the officer on obligation.
A Grade 11 scholar who adored horses and spent her childhood on the stables, she had began appearing out. She was skipping college, experimenting with marijuana, after which got here the bank card incident — the unauthorized buy, she stated, of a videogame console by forging her mother’s signature. So in Could 2003, her mother and father marched her into the police station, hoping a chat with a cop would scare her straight.
Const. Kevin Seamons was in full uniform, tall and intimidating, the woman remembers. What began as a stern talking-to grew into an hours-long interrogation — one that will later be known as an unjustified detainment with out arrest or warning.
It was solely the start. Over the following seven months, the married father of two initiated what a police misconduct prosecutor known as an “intensely involved” relationship with a high-school woman. Frequent drop-ins to her household residence become drives in his squad automotive, visits to the station and a visit out of city, and even out on energetic calls. Later defending his actions as an try to assist a troubled youth, Seamons spent scores of hours, one-on-one, with the woman, none of it ever documented in his notes or approved.
The connection would finish Seamons’ policing profession. After it was found, different misconduct got here to gentle, together with his on-duty theft of pornographic private Polaroids taken from a lady’s bed room throughout a home name.
That the case by no means drew headlines was remarked upon in a 2006 choice dismissing Seamons.
“If details of the allegations against Constable Seamons were made known to the public, the damage to the reputation of the Durham Regional Police Service would be huge,” wrote Supt. Robert Chapman.
Greater than 20 years later, the now-grown teenager desires to inform what she says is the complete story.
This summer season, she filed a lawsuit in opposition to Seamons and the Durham Regional Police Companies Board alleging she was groomed, stalked and sexually assaulted by Seamons after he took benefit of his distinctive place of energy and authority as a cop. The Durham police power, the lawsuit alleges, then didn’t totally examine, as an alternative “covering up the abuse.”
The allegations had swift penalties. Ontario’s Particular Investigations Unit (SIU), which conducts legal investigations into police, has now re-opened their historic sexual assault investigation into the case, citing new data offered by Durham police.
“I thought, over the years, that I’d be able to forget and move on, and I can’t,” stated the complainant, now 38, who the Star just isn’t figuring out as a result of she is an alleged sufferer of sexual assault. “I think that at this point in my life I’m ready to face it.”
The lawsuit’s allegations haven’t been confirmed in courtroom and Seamons has not but filed a press release of defence. Reached by cellphone, Seamons, who lives out of province, stated: “I’ve been told more or less to keep quiet.”
“I don’t know what I should say, allowed to say. Tell you this, I’ve tried to tell my story in the past and nobody wanted to f—ing listen,” he stated.
No assertion of defence has but been filed by the Durham Regional Police Companies Board, although the board filed a discover of intent to defend in September. A spokesperson for the board stated they might not present any remark.
Durham police confirmed that they notified the SIU concerning the allegations contained within the lawsuit; a spokesperson for the SIU stated their probe was relaunched after Durham police offered new data on Aug. 27. The watchdog is asking anybody with data to return ahead.
Kate Puddister, a College of Guelph police researcher who has tracked the end result of tons of of sexual assault complaints to the SIU, stated victims aged 13 to 19 are the second commonest age group, after these aged 20-29. There’s a frequent theme within the alleged assaults of minors, she stated.
“In these cases, we see instances of victims turning to the police for help or guidance and then end up being assaulted or abused,” stated Puddister, who doesn’t have direct data of the Durham case.
In keeping with the lawsuit, Seamons’ “inappropriate and intense interest” within the teen started the night time she was introduced into the station by her mother and father. That night, the lawsuit alleges, Seamons compelled her to take away her pants and lay throughout his lap. Raised to respect authority, the complainant advised the Star she assumed a police officer might make such calls for.
Over the following seven months, Seamons “used the implicit trust, authority, and power” of being a police officer to develop into near the woman and her household, the lawsuit alleges. It claims Seamons’ efforts included befriending her mother and father and providing to supply steering and mentorship to the teenager, randomly calling and coming to the household residence whereas on obligation, lurking in entrance of her college and driving her round in his patrol automotive and “intentionally and deliberately” interfering in her private affairs.
“He just completely put himself right in the centre of my life,” she advised the Star.
The lawsuit alleges he started sexually assaulting the complainant, together with inside his Durham patrol automotive and on the station. The assaults, which made her really feel “confused, fearful, shameful, guilty and complicit,” included stripping her of her clothes and leering at her, groping her breasts, buttocks and vagina, and rape, the lawsuit claims.
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He simply fully put himself proper within the centre of my life
As a result of his place and since Seamons confirmed the teenager his massive assortment of weapons, she was first “terrified to report the abuse,” the lawsuit alleges. In December 2003, she disclosed the assaults to her boyfriend; when her mom confronted her, she revealed solely a part of the abuse, “afraid of what Seamons would do if she disclosed fully,” the lawsuit stated.
After the woman’s mother made a report back to the Durham police, the power launched an investigation and notified the SIU. The watchdog opened a sexual assault probe, however closed the case with none charges.
Ivanna Iwasykiw, the complainant’s civil lawyer, stated the SIU by no means acquired the complete account of the allegations in opposition to Seamons, partially as a result of Durham police discouraged her from offering data that will fall outdoors the realm {of professional} misconduct (Durham police didn’t reply to a request for remark by deadline). The lawsuit alleges there have been issues with how the teenager was interviewed: she offered 5 separate statements to police and SIU investigators, was not supplied entry to a lawyer and couldn’t herald a guardian or grownup for assist, and that “at points during the interview, (she) was told not to speak about certain of her allegations.”
However Durham’s inner probe quickly confirmed that Seamons had been spending a major quantity of on-duty time with a 17-year-old, with whom he had an “inappropriate” relationship — one the place he was offering a “private police service” to the woman and her household, a ruling from a provincial police attraction physique stated.
In keeping with a 35-page choice by Chapman, which summarized the case and his causes for dismissal, Seamons pleaded responsible to 10 counts {of professional} misconduct, most regarding his time with the teenager.
Seamons admitted that on the night time the woman’s mother and father introduced her in, he held her for “several hours” however failed to supply any documentation of the interview, and that he attended her household residence “on numerous occasions” and took her in his squad automotive with out telling dispatch or making any notes, together with on a visit outdoors his patrol space to Oshawa.
He additionally admitted he allowed her to be current on the police station whereas he did “scenes of crime officer (SOCO)” element on a recovered stolen automobile — placing a legal investigation in danger, Chapman discovered — and introduced her to an energetic home violence name, leaving her within the automotive.
By means of his lawyer, Seamons stated he thought-about his time with the teenager a service to the group — he believed his actions had been consistent with the power’s mission assertion as a result of he was serving to a troubled teenager and her mother and father, in keeping with a abstract of his defence in Chapman’s ruling. It was “an attempt to do the right thing,” the ruling cited his lawyer as saying — although he admitted Seamons “may have gotten too personal.”
The police prosecutor went additional, saying the officer did precise hurt to the woman by his “intensely involved” relationship together with her, through which he “spent hours and hours one on one with her performing untrained counselling,” in keeping with Chapman’s ruling.
Seamons had been suspended whereas police investigated his relationship with the teenager, and a search of his locker uncovered 9 pictures of a pornographic nature. Seamons had taken the images from a lady’s bed room throughout a home violence investigation (known as as a witness on the misconduct listening to, the lady stated she was “shocked, hurt and embarrassed,” in keeping with an attraction doc).
“The fact an officer took a citizen’s property without legal cause by itself would have a very negative impact on the Service’s image. Include the information the property seized was pornographic in nature and the damage to the Service’s reputation increases dramatically,” wrote Chapman.
“Add the fact the same officer spent so much on duty time alone with a 17-year (old) female and the damage would become devastating.”
Iwasykiw stated she hopes the lawsuit, alongside the re-opened SIU investigation, can convey her consumer justice.
“She needs some form of accountability. And she definitely needs some kind of closure,” Iwasykiw stated.
Sexual assault is already among the many most troublesome offences to analyze and prosecute, and when the accused is a police officer these challenges are intensified, stated Puddister, who’s an affiliate professor at Guelph College. Complainants could keep away from coming ahead to start with, as a consequence of concern of retaliation by police or the ability imbalance between a sufferer and an officer. Once they do, proof is usually missing, that means the case hinges on credibility assessments the place cops’ standing and experience within the justice system put them .
“When we take all of these factors together, it makes accountability for police misconduct exceptionally difficult,” she stated.
A 2022 research co-authored by Puddister and Danielle McNabb, an assistant professor at Brock College, discovered that of the almost 700 studies of sexual assault acquired by the SIU between 2005 and 2020, simply 1.59 per cent resulted in a conviction and sentence.
Puddister famous, nonetheless, that though older instances might be additional difficult to analyze because of the passage of time, her analysis discovered historic instances dealt with by the SIU have led to profitable prosecutions.
The complainant stated she desires to encourage any sufferer of sexual assault to return ahead, “no matter who it is.”
