The Peel Regional Police Service has lost an appeal that sought to prevent the province’s Special Investigations Unit from investigating an alleged sexual assault by a Peel officer now retired.
The Ontario Court of Appeal made its decision Monday, upholding a lower court decision.
In addition, the three-member panel affirmed that the SIU has the authority to investigate incidents that happened before it was created in 1990.
In 2010, Peel police petitioned to prevent the SIU from continuing its investigation of a complaint made by a woman who alleged she had been sexually assaulted by a Peel officer some years before the SIU was created.
The Peel police service asserted that it was the proper agency to investigate the complaint and refused to co-operate with the SIU’s investigation. When SIU director Ian Scott directed Peel police to stop their own investigation, they declined to do so.
Peel police argued that the case did not fall within the SIU’s mandate because it had occurred before 1990 and because the subject of the complaint had since retired.
On Feb. 11, 2011, a judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that the SIU did, in fact, have jurisdiction in the case.
“The Ontario Court of Appeal decision makes it clear that police officers cannot escape the jurisdiction of the SIU by resigning or retiring,” Scott said in a news release.
Peel police do not plan to appeal the decision, giving the SIU the opportunity to renew its investigation.
The alleged assaults took place in 1981 or 1982.
The complaint was originally received on June 26, 2010. The complainant also claimed that a second officer witnessed or knew of the assaults, some of which were said to have taken place while the complainant, then a minor, was being taken into custody.
It later emerged that the alleged perpetrator and alleged witness had both retired by the time the complaint was filed.
In dismissing the appeal, the Court of Appeal awarded $11,500 in costs to the SIU.
