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The RCMP went undercover in 2012 to catch immigration lawyer Sandra Saccucci Zaher in lies, her trial heard Tuesday.

But Zaher’s lawyer suggests it was the police who were loose with the truth, lying in court documents to get authorization to wear hidden microphones as they posed as prospective clients seeking Zaher’s advice.

Zaher is on trial charged with fabricating evidence, a Criminal Code offence. She is additionally charged with two counts under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act — misrepresenting facts in a refugee claim and helping someone make a false claim for refugee status.

Zaher ran an immigration practice in Windsor until her law licence was suspended in 2012. Diana Al-Masalkhi is charged along with Zaher, her former boss.

RCMP Sgt. Steven Richardson testified he went to an Ontario court judge in January 2012 to get authorization for a colleague to wear a wire while meeting with Zaher. The colleague pretended to be a prospective client getting advice on how to get refugee status in Canada.

The defence in the case is trying to get all the secret recordings barred from becoming evidence at the trial. Zaher’s lawyer, Patrick Ducharme, alleges the RCMP misled the judge who authorized them to gather the evidence.

Richardson, in documents to get court authorization for the wires, said Zaher was “actively counselling individuals to misrepresent themselves” in immigration proceedings.

But Ducharme got the officer to concede that the basis of his application was a single allegation from a man who claimed Zaher had fabricated a back story he used to secure refugee status.

“It should have not read that way,” Richardson conceded of his wording in the court documents.

• Read Sarah Sacheli’s tweets during court Tuesday

Ducharme suggested the RCMP didn’t do enough digging into the man. Some of the things he told officers didn’t make sense, but officers never challenged him, Ducharme said.

For one, the man claimed he was afraid for his and his family’s safety if his government discovered he had sought refugee status. Yet, he willingly moved back to Yemen despite securing that status here. As a refugee, he could have pursued permanent residency, but abandoned his claim, court heard.

Citing concerns for the man’s safety, the court has banned publication of information which would identify him.

Richardson testified officers were contacted by local immigration counsellor Gabe Maggio in the fall of October 2011. Maggio put them in touch with the man.

Zaher testified there was bad blood between her and Maggio. Maggio saw himself as her competition, she said.

Zaher testified Maggio had been making disparaging comments about her long before this client came along.

She had considered suing him for defamation, but didn’t because of a family relationship. Maggio’s brother is the common-law husband of her first cousin, Zaher explained.

“I didn’t want to hurt my aunt and uncle.”

Richardson said Maggio claimed Zaher had counselled other clients to lie, but Maggio refused to provide names.

Richardson returns to the witness stand Wednesday.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or Twitter@WinStarSacheli

The saying lost in translation took on new meaning at suspended immigration lawyer Sandra Zaher’s criminal trial Wednesday.

Zaher’s lawyer, Patrick Ducharme, grilled RCMP officer Steven Richardson about how much investigation he did into a man who reported Zaher for allegedly coaching clients to lie at refugee hearings.

The man claimed he got refugee status after Zaher wrote a bogus narrative about his life back in Yemen using documents he provided her. But Ducharme pointed out that many of the documents were in Arabic and, according to affadavits attached to them, they weren’t translated by a worker in Zaher’s office until 1½ years after his refugee hearing.

“You didn’t do any modicum of investigation, did you?” Ducharme asked Richardson. “You had a duty to investigate.”

Zaher, is on trial, charged criminally with misleading justice by fabricating evidence. She is also charged with two counts under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act — misrepresenting facts in a refugee claim and helping someone make a false claim for refugee status.

Zaher ran an immigration practice in Windsor until her law licence was suspended in 2012. Diana Al-Masalkhi, is charged along with Zaher, her former boss.

• Read Sarah Sacheli’s tweets from court Wednesday

The RCMP went to an Ontario court judge in January 2012 to get authorization to secretly record conversations with Zaher. Court has heard an officer posed as a prospective client seeking refugee status.

Ducharme is trying to get the secret recordings excluded from evidence in the trial on the basis that the police were not “full, fair and frank,” in presenting their reasons to the judge who authorized the wires.

The reasons, put in writing, were based on what Zaher’s former client told them. But Ducharme harangued Richardson about holes in the client’s story.

A publication ban prohibits identifying the client, who says he fears for his safety.

The client came to the RCMP through local immigration consultant Gabe Maggio. Court has heard that there was bad blood between Maggio and Zaher.

Maggio told the RCMP that Zaher had helped clients lie in refugee hearings in the past. Ducharme charged that Richardson, in applying for wire tap authorization, put that information to the judge, too, without checking into the claim.

In an at-times testy exchange, Richardson said he had no reason to doubt Maggio and the client’s motives.

“I stand by what I wrote.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or on Twitter @WinStarSacheli

In the ongoing trial of suspended lawyer Sandra Zaher, the defence Thursday continued to grill the lead investigator who probed allegations of her concocting refugee stories for would-be immigrants.

After enduring three days of cross-examination by Zaher’s lawyer, RCMP Sgt. Steven Richardson Thursday came under the microscope of defence lawyer Laura Joy. Joy represents Diana Al-Masalkhi, Zaher’s former assistant.

Zaher and Al-Masalkhi are charged criminally with misleading justice by fabricating evidence. They are also charged with two counts under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act – misrepresenting facts in a refugee claim and aiding someone to make a false claim for refugee status.

Joy continued the theme that the RCMP didn’t do enough to determine the real motivation of the man who complained to them about Zaher in late 2011. The man, whose identity is the subject of a publication ban, alleged Zaher wrote a bogus narrative he used to secure refugee status.

Windsor immigration consultant Gabriel Maggio. (Windsor Star files)

The man was put in touch with the RCMP by local immigration consultant Gabe Maggio. Court has heard Maggio had a vendetta against Zaher.

But Richardson said, apart from the initial contact, Maggio had nothing more to do with the case. “He didn’t follow up,” Richardson said. “If this was his cunning plan to get rid of some of his competition, I don’t have a lot of faith in that.”

Richardson testified he was cynical about why a man who had secured refugee status would risk prosecution and deportation by admitting he had lied.

“I kept trying to find some negative motive… The only thing I can put my finger to is remorse.”

But Joy said a recent email from the man suggests the man went to the RCMP thinking they could help him get permanent resident status without him having to pay for the services of a immigration lawyer like Zaher.

The man says he will come to Canada to testify and never return home if Richardson has made the proper arrangements with immigration officials.

The defence is trying to discredit Richardson’s investigation in the hope that secret recordings of Zaher and Al-Masalkhi will be excluded as evidence at trial. Joy and Zaher’s lawyer, Patrick Ducharme, insist Richardson was not entirely frank with the judge who gave the RCMP authorization for the wires.

Ducharme said Thursday the defence not only oppose the transcripts of the secret recordings to be used as Crown evidence in the trial, the officers should not be able to use them to refresh their memories when they testify.

The recordings were made during meetings at Zaher’s office in early 2012.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or Twitter@WinStarSacheli

A woman who claimed she endured persistent sexual harassment while working at the “boys club” known as the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers has settled her $450,000 lawsuit against the group and two of its directors.

Laura Brinkmann was the former marketing co-ordinator at the Leamington-based organization. She sued for constructive dismissal, claiming in court documents that the “cumulative conduct of the defendants… created a work environment in which no reasonable person would be expected to continue employment.”

She named directors Jordan Kniaziew of Orangeline Farms in Leamington and Jim Veri of Exeter Produce and Storage in her lawsuit.

Late last month, her lawsuit was dismissed with the consent of all parties without it ever going to trial. It’s unknown how much money, if any, Brinkmann received to consent to the dismissal.

“The issues have been resolved between the parties without admission of liability,” Richard Pollock, Brinkmann’s lawyer, said Friday.

He declined to comment further on the case.

Kniaziew’s lawyer, Kimberley Wolfe, similarly declined to comment other than to confirm the case had been “dismissed on consent.”

Lawyers for Veri and the OGVG did not return phone calls.

The settlement came as Brinkmann filed an expanded statement of claim with the court. In it, she claimed she had recently discovered that her employer had been using surveillance software to search her computer for keywords such as “pregnant” and “sex,” as well as her husband’s name.

None of the allegations contained in the amended statement of claim nor in her original lawsuit were ever proven in court.

Among her original claims, Brinkmann said Kniaziew grabbed her by the arm and forcefully kissed her at a trade show in California.

Kniaziew, in his statement of defence filed with the court, denied the incident, claiming Brinkmann was too drunk to remember what happened.

Brinkmann claimed Veri made derogatory comments about her specifically and about women in general. Veri denies any harassment, claiming she complained about him after he expressed valid criticism about her work.

The OGVG in its statement of defence said it had addressed Brinkmann’s complaints as she brought them to her attention, but that it had no opportunity to deal with her allegations about what occurred at the California trade show because she never returned to work.

The statements of defence, similar to Brinkmann’s claims, were never tested in court.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

A man described in court as the “mastermind” behind a drug smuggling ring was sentenced Friday to six years in prison.

Charbel Chibani, 35, looked incredulous and shook his head as Superior Court Justice Terry Patterson passed sentence. Chibani’s common-law wife, with whom he has a baby, began to sob.

Soon after the sentencing, defence lawyer Laura Joy said an appeal is planned.

Chibani’s friend, Mary Ann Habib, was caught driving into the United States Oct. 28, 2009 with 57,000 ecstacy tablets stashed in a secret compartment in the back of a Nissan Quest minivan. The pills, weighing 22.7 kilograms, were valued at up to $1.2 million.

Habib, who co-operated with police and allowed them to listen in on phone conversations she had with Chibani after her arrest, is currently serving a 32-month sentence in a U.S. prison. She testified for the Crown at Chibani’s trial by video in exchange for a reduction in what would have been a 10-year sentence.

Habib testified she knew she was crossing the border for a drug run, but believed she was to pick up drugs in Texas. She said she didn’t know the ecstacy was in the vehicle she had been given to drive.

“Ms. Habib had much to gain in testifying and implicating Mr. Chibani,” said Joy. Another man, who has fled to Lebanon, was likely the true ringleader, she said.

“There was no direct evidence against Mr. Chibani,” Joy insisted. “We feel we have a very strong appeal.”

The Crown had sought the very sentence Patterson imposed. “It was a thoughtful, reasoned judgment,” said federal drug prosecutor Ed Posliff.

Joy, on the other hand, had asked for a sentence of house arrest of less than two years.

Patterson pointed to Chibani’s criminal record and said house arrest was “not appropriate.” Chibani has breached court orders, including while on bail for this offence, and had two prior convictions for possessing drugs for the purpose of trafficking.

Patterson convicted Chibani last month of conspiracy.

Patterson said first-time offenders caught acting as drug mules can expect sentences of three to four years.

“Mr Chibani was not a low-end courier or mule. He was the mastermind.”

Joy said Chibani is applying for bail pending appeal.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

A drunk driver who hit five parked cars and sheared off a utility pole knocking out power to Point Pelee Drive in Leamington in August was placed on probation and handed hefty fines Monday.

Martin Klassen, 63, was drunk at 10 a.m. Aug. 31 as he drove his Dodge Ram pickup truck through Leamington.

On Point Pelee Drive, he hit cars parked in driveways and along the side of the road, plowing into shrubs and mailboxes and finally coming to rest after knocking down a utility pole.

Court heard Friday it’s a miracle no one was killed or injured.

“He’s very ashamed of himself. He’s very thankful nobody was hurt,” said his lawyer, Michael Gordner.

Gordner beseeched the judge to be lenient on Klassen, who requires his driver’s licence for work so he can make restitution to the people whose property he damaged.

Ontario court Justice Lloyd Dean fined Klassen $2,400. He suspended the man’s licence for a year, but the man could drive sooner if he qualifies for an ignition interlock device.

Dean placed the man on probation for 18 months during which time he must pay the insurance deductibles for the vehicles he damaged and the cost of replacing the mailboxes. He must also pay the Town of Leamington $6,700 for the cost of replacing the utility pole and power lines he damaged.

Dean said he made the restitution order to save the town from having to sue Klassen civilly.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Her daughter’s anguished screams haunt Karen Jones’s nightmares.

The mother and daughter were walking along Victoria Avenue in Windsor on June 16, 2013, when a car sped around the corner, hopped the curb and plowed into them.

“My daughter was almost stolen from me,” Jones said through tears as she read out a statement in court Monday.

The driver of the vehicle who struck them was sentenced to 10 months in jail. K’paw Ku, now 21, didn’t have a licence, nor had he ever driven a car when he and his friend, Laing Chit, also 21, decided to go for a spin.

After the crash, they fled the scene.

Jones’s daughter, now 16, suffered internal bleeding, a lacerated liver and broken bones. She underwent two surgeries.

She had road rash from head to toe. Flesh was ripped from her body exposing bone. It took days for medical staff to dig out all the gravel embedded in her skin.

Jones, who had tire tracks across her body, suffered multiple fractures in her right leg and left foot. She lost a toe in the crash, has arthritis in her hips and suffers constant headaches.

“I’ve never known pain such as this.”

Jones wears a brace and still can’t climb stairs. She walks with the help of crutches splashed with bright paint that belie the deep depression Jones fights daily.

Ku came to Canada in 2009. His Burmese parents fled to Taiwan where he and his siblings were born in a refugee camp. Ku is a permanent resident of Canada.

He struggled in school and quit to help support his family. He works full time at a greenhouse in Leamington. The minister of the Baptist church he and his family attend was among his supporters in court.

“He is a productive member of society who made an extremely poor choice,” said defence lawyer Rae-Anne Copat.

Assistant Crown attorney Tim Kavanagh said police at first believed Ku’s friend was the driver. The friend was arrested and charged. Ku came forward later and took responsibility.

Ku pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing bodily harm.

“He came forward when there wasn’t much of a case against him,” said Kavanagh.

Ontario court Justice Lloyd Dean said he considered that fact, as well as Ku’s lack of a criminal record, as mitigating factors in sentencing.

“It’s senseless what occurred,” Dean said, calling the crash “another example where a bad choice leads to bad consequences.”

In addition to physical pain, Jones has suffered endless insurance battles and is out of pocket for hundreds of dollars a month in prescriptions. Her mother had to put her own life on hold and fly across the country to care for her daughter and granddaughter.

Jones was in hospital, then in a continuing care home for months after the crash. She couldn’t hold her daughter’s hand or console the girl as she went through her own surgeries and treatments.

Jones said, if her daughter hadn’t survived, she would have likely committed suicide.

“This is a case that obviously strikes at the human heart,” the judge said. Jones and her daughter have yet to heal physically and emotionally.

“It will require great strength on their part to move past this. I hope they do in the years to come.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or 519-255-5509

Windsor police went on a hiring spree in 2014, signing 18 cadets in the final year that new employees are entitled to benefits for life.

Police in the city represent the final frontier of post-retirement benefits eliminated for other city employees long ago. Anyone hired after Dec. 31 will get benefits until age 75. Firefighters, too, are covered until age 75, but the hiring deadline to qualify for such benefits was Oct. 24, 2013.

By comparison, other city workers get benefits only until age 65. In the case of non-union municipal workers, their hiring deadline to qualify for lifetime benefits was 8½ years ago, in May 2006.

“Police are the last group,” said Onorio Colucci, city treasurer. “If you get hired this year, you’re still eligible for post-retirement benefits for life.”

The city currently pays almost $10 million on benefits for retired workers.

Windsor police Chief Al Frederick said getting new recruits in under the Dec. 31 deadline had nothing to do with their hiring. “That’s not even a consideration,” Frederick said Wednesday.

Hiring is done according to attrition, he said.

Twelve officers have retired and two more have resigned this year. This is in addition to 10 retirements and two resignations in 2013.

Five new cadets were hired in 2013.

Windsor Police respond to a call from the downtown headquarters on Goyeau Street, Wednesday, December 3, 2014. (NICK BRANCACCIO/The Windsor Star)

Frederick said, despite the hiring blitz, the ranks have still thinned in the service. There are currently 440 sworn members of the force, compared to 473 two years ago.

“”We’ve reduced sworn staff by six per cent,” Frederick said. “Our reductions in staffing happened in the 2012 and 2013 budget years.”

Frederick said it takes, on average, about two years to become a newly minted constable. The barrage of provincially mandated tests — a general competency test, physical fitness and medical tests — and local interviews usually take about a year to complete, and many applicants don’t pass the first time around, Frederick said.

Even passing all the elements doesn’t guarantee a job. “This is a competition,” Frederick said. “This isn’t about taking people with a minimum standard. They compete with each other.”

If hired, new cadets are assigned to duties such as court security or delivering subpoenas for about six months before being sent off to police college for three months. Graduates get sworn in as constables.

In accordance with the Windsor Police Association collective agreement, cadets make $44,731 a year. Newly minted constables, referred to as recruit constables, make $53,827.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or 519-255-5509

A retired Anglican priest charged with sexually assaulting boys from his Chatham parish in the 1980s is free on bail after pleading guilty to missing his earlier court dates.

Harry Brydon, 65, appeared in Ontario court in Chatham Friday in a wheelchair, having been transported here from Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton, Ont., where he has been held.

Brydon pleaded guilty to failing to attend court three times — in February, June and August — and failing to attend at the police station as required in February. He has been in jail for the past 55 days.

Ontario court Justice Ross Webster sentenced Brydon to 60 days in jail, giving Brydon the customary enhanced credit for the time he has already spent behind bars. Webster also imposed a mandatory fine of $300 which will go into a provincial fund to help victims of crime.

Brydon left the courthouse in a wheelchair-accessible van operated by a local taxi service. He is returning to Harrowood, a seniors complex in Harrow. He was released on $3,500 bail, but was not made to deposit any money with the court.

Brydon is not to possess any weapons and must abstain from alcohol and non-medically prescribed drugs.

He cannot try to communicate with three alleged victims.

Brydon, who was first arrested in Harrow and released on a promise to appear in court, was taken into custody when he failed to show up.

Defence lawyer David Jacklin said it’s difficult for Brydon to make his way to court. But, “that’s no excuse,” Jacklin conceded, explaining Brydon didn’t make transportation arrangements to attend court.

Brydon Friday signed court documents which will allow Jacklin to appear on his behalf for future routine court dates.

Brydon still faces charges of sexual assault and administering a noxious substance to his alleged victims in incidents said to have occurred between 1985 and 1986.

Brydon was a priest at St. Paul’s Anglican Church from 1984 to 1988.

Brydon has no current professional affiliation with the Anglican church, said Rev. Keith Nethery, spokesman for the Diocese of Huron.

“Harry Brydon has not held any licence or position for many years,” Nethery said in a telephone interview from London. The diocese is not involved in Brydon’s defence, nor have police contacted diocesan officials at any point in their investigation, Nethery said.

Brydon appeared in court Friday looking unkempt, in grey sweat pants and a black and beige polo shirt. His white beard was long and the heel of his right foot was bandaged in gauze.

Jacklin said Brydon has “medical issues,” which don’t allow him to be housed at the nearby Southwest Detention Centre, the new jail in Windsor.

During a break in court, Brydon made polite small talk with an officer transporting him from courtroom to courtroom. Brydon said he has been treated “very well” at Maplehurst where he has been housed in the infirmary.

Brydon’s case will be spoken to again later this month.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Twitter@WinStarSacheli

The Windsor trial of a Quebec man accused of running a human smuggling ring offered a rare glimpse Monday into how the U.S. patrols its waterfront to keep out illegal aliens.

The first day of the conspiracy trial of Bardhyl Cenolli, 61, heard from a trio of U.S. Border Patrol agents involved in the investigation which led to Cenolli’s Sept. 19, 2012 arrest.

One agent did surveillance from a park bench on the waterfront, trying not to look conspicuous. Another was on Belle Isle, in a high-tech truck camouflaged to look like a camper. A third was aboard a patrol vessel that on this day ventured into Canadian waters to affect an arrest.

Undercover agent Eric Lee testified he was sitting on a park bench in Detroit’s Ford Park trying not to look too out of place. Lee said he had his eyes trained across the narrow channel at Alter Park, a neglected city-owned property known for shootings, drug activity and prostitution.

The odd walleye fisherman from Detroit might launch from the park situated where the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair meet, but “very rarely do Canadians use it,” Lee testified.

On this date, U.S. border patrol had received a tip that Windsorite John Phillip Jordan, a known people smuggler, had launched his boat from Little River. “We had spent a couple of years trying to get into a position where we could arrest him,” Lee testified.

On the Canadian side, RCMP officers had watched Cenolli drive an unknown man to the marina where Jordan docked his boat. Soon the unknown man, wearing a blue jacket with white script on it, was a passenger in Jordan’s boat as it motored across the Detroit River, court heard.

Jordan’s boat came around the west end of Peche Island, sat in the river for a while, then made a beeline for Alter Park. Lee said he watched as Jordan pulled up to the sea wall at Alter Park and shooed his passenger toward the shore.

The passenger, an Albanian man with no legal right to enter the United States, was arrested and later deported.

Meanwhile, back in Windsor, RCMP officers were tailing Cenolli. They had been following him since his black Cadillac had been spotted on the 401. They watched him pull into an abandoned gas station at Erie Street and Parent Avenue and rendezvous with two men in a black Toyota. A piece of luggage was transferred from the Cadillac to the Toyota, an RCMP officer testified Monday.

Another officer said he watched Cenolli and two other men go into a travel agency on Erie Street. Then Cenolli was back in his car, driving to a parking lot near Little River.

RCMP Const. Jae Shin said he searched Cenolli’s Cadillac after his arrest. Between the centre console and the front passenger seat was a hand-drawn map showing the route U.S. border patrol agents had watched Jordan’s boat take to Alter Park.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Marko Kozina said he intercepted Jordan’s boat as it returned to Windsor. Kozina said he arrested Jordan in Canadian waters.

Jordan was held, but later released without charges. He was prosecuted in Canada.

In October, Jordan, 58, pleaded guilty in Ontario court to conspiring to violate U.S. immigration law – the same crime with which Cenolli is charged.

At Jordan’s sentencing hearing in Windsor, the judge told him he was lucky not to have been prosecuted in the United States. Here, he received a sentence of one year on house arrest. In the U.S., the judge said, Jordan would have been jailed for 10 years.

Jordan is expected to testify against Cenolli later this week.

Cenolli, who listened to court proceedings with the help of an Albanian translator, remains free on $25,000 bail as his trial in Superior Court continues.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or 519-255-5509

Laura McGowan steals from her bosses.

Now, for the first time, she is going to spend some time behind bars for it.

McGowan, 28, was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in jail to be served on weekends for stealing nearly $63,000 from Dr. Veena Rai. Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance imposed the “extraordinarily lenient” sentence so McGowan can continue to work at her new job to pay back the money she stole.

McGowan worked in Rai’s family practice for about 4 ½ years, rising through the ranks to where Rai entrusted her with accounting duties. McGowan abused that trust over the next 15 months, writing 70 cheques to herself from the doctor’s account.

McGowan rationalized the theft and forgery by telling the court how nasty Rai was to employees. The judge said she found the pejorative language McGowan used “distressing,” and said it implied McGowan felt entitled to steal.

But also troubling, the judge said, was that McGowan has been prosecuted for embezzlement twice before. In 2008, McGowan was handed a conditional discharge for stealing from Windsor Disposal Services. The waste management company fired McGowan after discovering a $19,000 discrepancy in cash receipts.

The sentence McGowan received did not count as a conviction, meaning McGowan came to the court in Rai’s case with no criminal record.

While free on bail, McGowan worked at a local Dollar Tree store where she was caught on camera stealing money from the cash register. The store alleged McGowan took almost $500. In court Tuesday, McGowan said the amount was $25. She was convicted of theft last year and given a suspended sentence, meaning she served no jail time.

“A message must clearly be sent to Ms. McGowan that this conduct will not be tolerated,” Pomerance said. “This was not an isolated event, but a pattern of conduct.”

Pomerance ordered McGowan not to take any job where she has direct access to money. That condition will apply for a year after her jail sentence is complete

Also during that period of probation, McGowan must take whatever counselling her probation officer recommends.

Rai sued her former employee civilly and got a judgment allowing her to garnish McGowan’s wages. McGowan currently earns $14.36 an hour working at TRQSS, a quality safety systems company in Tecumseh.

She has so far paid back $4,800 of the money she owes the doctor.

Rai, in a statement entered into the court record, said McGowan robbed her of her retirement fund.

Court heard how McGowan was abused as a child and has been steadily employed since age 15. The judge accepted that McGowan did not have a stable childhood, but said there had been no connection drawn between that and her embezzlement.

Similarly, McGowan did not claim she stole money to feed a gambling addiction, despite telling the court she was frequent casino visitor while she worked for Rai.

McGowan pleaded guilty to theft and forgery in the case. Two additional fraud-related charges were dropped as part of a plea bargain.

The 90-day intermittent sentence was jointly recommended by defence lawyer Linda McCurdy and assistant Crown attorney Tom Meehan.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

The circumstances under which John Philip Jordan launched his career as a human smuggler had begun innocently enough.

Jordan had spent this day in the late summer of 2010 on his 19-foot Bayliner, fishing the waters between Windsor and Detroit. Jordan pulled into Abars, a tavern along the Detroit River, and was on, perhaps, his second beer when a couple men with accents came over to his table and struck up a conversation.

“We were chit-chatting,” Jordan said. The Windsor man didn’t know at first that he was being recruited for anything. But after agreeing to meet with the men again a couple weeks later, Jordan, an unemployed man living off his savings, was into a new line of work, one that promised quick, easy cash.

Jordan, 58, testified Wednesday at the human smuggling trial of Bardhyl Cenolli. Jordan identified Cenolli, 61, as the man who, for two years until they were caught, brought him the illegal aliens he ferried across the Detroit River.

Bardhyl Cenolli enters the Superior Court in Windsor on Monday, Dec. 8, 2014. He is charged with conspiracy in relation to a human smuggling ring. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

Jordan said Cenolli at first paid him $2,000 per trip. After a year or so, Jordan wanted more, so Cenolli upped his payments to $2,500.

In all, Jordan smuggled 15 people into the U.S.

The routine was always the same. Cenolli had given Jordan a cellphone and Cenolli would call him on it to arrange trips. As Cenolli would approach the city limits in his black Cadillac with Quebec plates, he’d call Jordan again and tell him to ready his boat.

Jordan would motor down Little River and pick up his human cargo at a parking lot near the mouth. In all but a couple cases, Cenolli would be at the parking lot to deliver the passengers.

Jordan said he would motor into the Detroit River, around the west end of Peche Island and to the banks of a neglected Detroit property known as Alter Park. Jordan said the return trip would take “20 minutes tops.”

Jordan testified he didn’t know the names of any of the people he transported or where they were from. He assumed they had no documents. “It was illegal what I was doing.”

He was arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol on Sept. 19, 2012 as he returned from ferrying an Albanian man across the Detroit River.

Jordan spent 20 days at the Wayne County Jail before being released into RCMP custody. His U.S. lawyer had told him he wasn’t prosecuted in the United States because U.S. agents had come into Canadian waters to arrest him.

Jordan pleaded guilty earlier this year to being a courier in Cenolli’s human smuggling ring. In October, after co-operating with an RCMP investigation and agreeing to testify against Cenolli at trial, Jordan was sentenced to one year on house arrest.

Jordan testified he didn’t know Cenolli’s real name until he spoke to RCMP officers after his arrest. Cenolli was introduced to him as Jack Daniels and that’s all he ever called him.

When asked by federal prosecutor Ed Posliff if the man he knew as Jack Daniels was in the courtroom, Jordan pointed at Cenolli.

Jordan was the Crown’s final witness in Cenolli’s trial. Earlier in the day, court heard from a Brazilian woman who testified via video from New York.

Ana Luisa Gonclaves Rodrigues, testifying with the help of a Portuguese interpreter, described flying into Toronto in late September or early October 2011 and staying at a hotel for 123 days before being picked up by an older man with thinning grey hair in a black Cadillac. The man drove her to “the border” where she was put in a boat and transported across a river.

Court heard the woman is co-operating with U.S. Homeland Security and has been granted permission to stay in the United States.

Defence lawyer Maria Carroccia begins presenting Cenolli’s case Thursday.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

The son of Windsor’s deputy police chief was among the last cadets hired before the deadline to qualify for lifetime benefits, The Star has learned, fuelling criticism about nepotism at the force.

David Derus, son of deputy chief Rick Derus, was hired in November, former mayor Eddie Francis, then head of the board that oversees the police service, confirmed Friday.

The names of the cadets hired at the last meeting of the outgoing board have not yet been made public by the board.

Nepotism at the force was raised recently at the disciplinary hearing of Const. Dorothy Nesbeth, suspended for not declaring alcohol she brought across the border. Police brass want her badge.

Nesbeth’s lawyer, Patrick Ducharme, has alleged his client is being dealt with more harshly because she is not part of the “old boys’ network” at the service.

“Everyone in the greater Windsor community knows the Windsor Police Service has a history of hiring and promoting on the basis of nepotism, cronyism, and favouritism,” Ducharme told Nesbeth’s disciplinary hearing.

Learning Friday that the force has just hired the deputy chief’s son, Ducharme said he wasn’t surprised.

“See, that just proves it’s still the same paradigm I’ve described,” Ducharme said. “It’s just one of many, many examples.”

Police Chief Al Frederick would not confirm he has hired his deputy’s son, citing confidentiality rules.

Both he and Francis insisted the police were not trying to get anyone in under the wire for post-retirement benefits. Windsor police is the last group of city employees eligible for post-retirement benefits eliminated for other municipal staff long ago.

With the exception of firefighters, other city workers get benefits only until age 65. Staff hired by police before Jan.1, 2015, qualify for such benefits as medical, dental and eyeglasses for life.

Frederick also insisted he gives no preferential treatment to family members, and, if anything, “they have a higher standard to meet” because of public perception.

He scoffed at the suggestion that the force plays favourites when it comes to hiring. “There is nothing untoward about my hiring practices … I absolutely am committed to hiring the best people in the community.”

He said he is delighted when family members make the cut. “We celebrate family members being hired here,” he said, explaining parents get to hand the badge to their child at swearing-in ceremonies.

When family members don’t make the cut, Frederick personally delivers the bad news himself to parents of unsuccessful candidates. “Sorry your kid doesn’t measure up… That’s a job I take on myself.”

Francis, in a phone interview Friday from his new job as an executive at Windsor Family Credit Union, said the board predicted the hiring of the deputy chief’s son would raise eyebrows. That’s why he and other board members gave his hiring special scrutiny.

“I can tell you that when his name came up I asked the question… ‘Was the proper process followed? … Everyone knew that when Rick Derus’s name hit the media that it would be an issue because of the fact that it was the son of the deputy chief.”

Francis said he and other board members were assured the hiring was based on merit and that Derus’s son did not get preferential treatment.

New Mayor Drew Dilkens said Friday he can’t speak to hiring practices at the police service since he was sworn in to the board only two days prior.

Windsor police have hired 18 new constables this year, but the apparent hiring spree has nothing to do with the impending change in benefit entitlements, Francis said. He said he insisted police defer hiring while a major reorganization was underway. Despite dozens of retirements, police hired no new cadets from May 2013 to January 2014, according to the minutes of police services board meetings.

Overall the size of the force has been reduced to 440 officers from 473 two years ago.

The hiring of Derus’s son comes on the heels of the hiring last year of two sons of Windsor police officers. Adam Langlois, hired in May 2013, is the son of Supt. Michael Langlois.

Chad Rundle, hired at the same time as Langlois, is the son of a retired Windsor police officer.

When Harrison Young was hired as a cadet in August, the minutes of the police services board meeting includes a notation that he has a family relationship to a member on the service. His sister Maggie Young had been hired as a cadet in January, according to the minutes.

No such notation appears for Rundle nor Langlois.

Frederick’s own son and the son of former chief Gary Smith are both Windsor police officers.

It’s unknown how many of the police service’s 440 officers are related to one another. But a census of the force conducted last year shows it is made up predominantly of white males.

To that end, the service has made a concerted effort to hire women and visible minorities.

“If I was them, I’d keep my head up,” said the lawyer for Dorothy Nesbeth. Patrick Ducharme maintains Nesbeth is perceived as useless to the force because she is a black woman.

He pointed to other male, white officers found guilty of deceitful conduct who were not fired.

Of Derus’s son, Ducharme said, “If that young officer one day makes a mistake, he’ll be judged differently than someone like Dorothy Nesbeth.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Depraved. Twisted. Totally lacking in any remorse.

A Superior Court judge seized upon these words Tuesday to describe a Windsor father who fed his insatiable appetite for sex by preying on his own children. He had daily intercourse with his daughters – one was as young as seven — and taught his son about sex by making the boy practise on his sister.

The Guatemala-born man, who can’t be named to shield the identity of his children, was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in prison. Enhanced credit for time he has already spent behind bars without bail reduces his sentence to 13 years and seven months.

Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas said, in his 16 years on the bench, he’s never come across a case where an accused person presented a “total absence of mitigating factors coupled with an absolute lack of any remorse.”

Assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Holmes called the man the “worst offender” she has ever prosecuted.

In the face of overwhelming evidence and already in jail for abusing the stepdaughter he treated as a second wife, the man pleaded not guilty and went to trial in March. He never took the witness stand. Even as the prosecutor asked for a 20-year jail sentence, the man offered no words of regret nor attempts at explaining his behaviour.

But, as the judge said as he set out the punishment for 24 crimes against five children dating back to 1997, “No one should be sentenced out of anger or disgust.”

In 1992, the man, now 58, married a woman with two preschoolers – a son and a daughter. What followed was what Thomas summarized as a “twisted reign of terror.”

Among the daughter’s earliest memories are of her father penetrating her with his fingers while she took a bath. He began having full intercourse with her when she was seven.

He told the little girl it was OK because he was her dad.

The man and his wife went on to have seven children in addition to the two from a previous relationship.

After those children were born, he fathered four more children with his stepdaughter. He got her pregnant five times, but once beat her so severely, she miscarried.

The man and his wife were on welfare and had been maintaining separate homes. He had hatched that plan so they could maximize the amount of social assistance they were receiving.

Each time his wife gave birth, he had her pretend she didn’t know who the father was to keep up the ruse.

The children lived between the two homes. To keep ahead of the child welfare authorities, he moved the family around the province and, once, into Quebec. This “kept the family off-balance,” the judge noted.

The father kept the family compliant with beatings and threats he’d kill the siblings. He brainwashed them into thinking if anyone learned of the abuse, the children would be split up and never see one another again. No one outside the family should be trusted.

His son recalled a girl calling for him on the phone when he was about 10. The father used the opportunity to teach his son about sex. He took the boy and his sister to a bed where he forced the girl to undress and lie down with her legs spread. He made the boy strip and had the children touch each other’s bodies while he masturbated. When the boy did not become aroused, the father forced the girl into the bathroom where he had intercourse with her himself.

The father had already been having sex with the girl two to three times a day.

When the girl was 14, he pulled her out of school and had her live with him as a full-time sexual partner and housekeeper. He had caused a scandal by claiming she had been gang raped by boys at school.

He didn’t let her leave the house. She became pregnant by him when she was 15.

He then moved on to intercourse with his younger daughters. He would routinely force them to strip so he could examine their genitals to make sure they weren’t having sex with boys from school. He called this “checking” them.

It was one of the many ways he was fiercely jealous of his stable of sexual partners.

When the father learned one of his daughters, then 14, had a boy interested in her, he violently raped her and made her sister help.

The abuse ended in March 2011 when the man was finally arrested. He had beaten his stepdaughter after she tried to stop him from having sex with her 10-year-old sister.

In what can generously be described as a partial disclosure to police, the young woman told of some of the abuse she had suffered. The man was convicted of forcible confinement, assault with a weapon, uttering death threats, sexual exploitation and public mischief. He was sentenced to four years in prison and would have been released in January 2014 at the latest.

The siblings were wildly disappointed with the sentence. So the eldest son called a family meeting where it was decided they would finally disclose to the police the indignities they had suffered.

In words that reduced the courtroom to tears, the judge praised the eldest son for bringing the family “out of the darkness.”

The children told the court they suffer depression and feelings of self-loathing. Attempted suicides and an inability to complete schooling was a common theme.

The children now refuse to call the man their father. “He lost that the day he decided to do this to my siblings,” explained the eldest son, in an interview after the sentencing.

No matter how long the man spends behind bars, “It’s never going to be enough,” he said.

“He told us if we ever said anything, he would kill us. I believed it… I lived a whole life in silence. No more.”

His mother has divorced and he and his siblings have moved to London where they rely on each other for support.

The judge urged them to “see each other through dark days.”

The family had requested that the customary publication ban in the case be lifted so the man’s identity would be known. The Crown refused to make the request, saying it might deter other sexual assault victims from coming forward.

For the longest time, the man had no lawyer willing to take his case to trial. The judge appointed someone to represent him.

The judge praised lawyer Julie Santarossa for upholding the “finest tradition of the defence bar,” by agreeing to take on the case of “an exceedingly unpopular client.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or on Twitter @WinStarSacheli

The Children’s Aid Society fears that 50 local families won’t have much of a Christmas unless more last-minute donations come in.

The CAS was already short of sponsors for its record number of families needing help when, in recent days, even more families turned to the agency for assistance. The number of families seeking assistance has ballooned to 858.

“The generosity of the community is there,” Mike Clark, manager of public relations for the CAS, said Wednesday. “But there are still gaps.”

Usually, donors sponsor a family and are given a list of items to buy. Most are done their shopping. Clark said it’s getting too late for any new donors to take on that same kind of time commitment so the CAS is now asking for cash donations.

“At this point cash donations would be most helpful,” Clark said. “We have staff who can do the shopping.”

It costs, on average, about $300 to sponsor a family, Clark said. This includes grocery store gift cards, toys for young children, hygiene products for teens, coats, boots, hats, gloves and mittens and household items like small kitchen appliances and bath towels.

Clark said the CAS is working with other local charities to fill some of those needs, but there are still items needed.

To make a donation, contact Andrea Barnett, the CAS’s community initiatives co-ordinator, at 519-252-1171 ext. 3236, or email abarnett@wecas.on.ca.

For more information on the Christmas giving program, visit wecas.org.

A former Boy Scout leader who fantasizes about raping children as he snuffs out their lives has become the area’s first convict to be named a long-term offender.

Steven Slade, 47, was sentenced Thursday to 6½ years behind bars. Once he finishes serving his prison sentence, the Windsor man will be placed in a half-way house or similar institution for at least another six months as part of a 10-year supervision order.

“I am satisfied there is a substantial risk Mr. Slade will reoffend,” said Ontario court Justice Lloyd Dean. The judge also ordered Slade to take medication that reduces his sex drive, commonly referred to as chemical castration.

Slade has twice been convicted of Internet luring. In 2009, he was sentenced to two years in prison for that crime, distributing child pornography and counselling others with violent pedophilic predilections to assault children.

Slade had just gotten out of prison and was on conditions not to contact children or access the Internet when in 2011, he went to the public library and used a computer to troll for boys.

He found two – a 15-year-old named Jeremy and a 14-year-old named Alex – both fictitious personas controlled by Windsor police officers in the Internet Child Exploitation unit.

Slade posted nude photos of himself and exchanged more than a thousand text messages with Alex. He believed the boy shared his diaper fetish and wanted his genitals burned with a hot iron.

On Feb. 1, 2012, Slade, who was living in Toronto at the time, boarded a Greyhound bus to Windsor expecting to rush into the bus station restroom to have sex with the 14-year-old boy.

Slade, so convinced the teen was real, wrote “Diaper Boy Alex” across the backside of the white briefs he was wearing.

Assistant Crown attorney Gary Nikota argued Slade poses such a threat to children that he should be designated a dangerous offender and kept behind bars indefinitely.

The judge disagreed.

“Not everyone who is a criminal or a danger to the public is a dangerous offender,” ruled Dean.

Defence lawyer Kevin Shannon had asked the judge to sentence Slade to an additional two years behind bars. Slade has already spent four years and two months in jail awaiting sentencing.

Nikota, who has prosecuted eight dangerous offender cases, said it was the first time he asked for the designation where there was “no live victim.”

The judge said the case represented uncharted legal waters. “There is no precedent for me to lean on,” Dean said.

The 10-year supervision order Dean imposed on Slade is the longest allowed by law.

That’s a good thing, given that Slade needs intensive counselling to curb his sexual urges toward pubescent boys, his own lawyer conceded. “He’s going to need so much help, the longer the better.”

If while on the subsequent supervision order Slade breaches his conditions in even a minor way, he could expect to be put back into a federal penitentiary for likely three to five years, before resuming the supervision order, Nikota said. In addition to the sentence, Dean placed Slade on the national sex offender registry for the rest of his life, meaning he has to let police know where he is living at all times.

He can’t ever own or possess firearms and he can’t ever go near a park, public swimming pool, school, daycare, community centre or any other place children normally frequent. He can’t ever take any job which involves working with children and he can’t use the Internet to communicate with anyone under the age of 16.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or on Twitter@WinStarSacheli

The Ministry of Labour has slapped the Ontario Provincial Police with four orders as it continues its investigation into complaints by officers assigned to work on Pelee Island.

Among the orders is that the OPP must conduct a “risk assessment for violence” for officers working on the island. Another order alludes to “equipment, material and protective devices” not being “maintained in good condition.”

The other orders relate to the posting of the Occupational Health and Safety Act and workplace violence and harassment policies.

Ministry of Labour inspectors visited the island last month after receiving health and safety complaints from officers. The officers have complained the island lacks a proper detachment like ones found on the mainland. Located on the second-floor of a former house, the makeshift detachment lacks basics like a holding cell.

Officers are instructed to hold prisoners in the back seat of the cruiser until the OPP boat can retrieve them. If, before the boat arrives, another emergency call comes in, the prisoner goes along for the ride.

Officers said the longstanding lack of facilities on the island puts them and their prisoners at risk.

Among other complaints is that there is no washroom for prisoners to use. Officers let them use their toilet in the office.

“The Ministry of Labour’s investigation continues,” ministry spokesman William Lin said Monday. It’s unknown if the OPP has complied with any of the orders. Lin said the orders are
“in progress.”

Neither the OPP nor the head of the union which represents officers could be reached for comment Monday.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com