A former military police officer says he faced commanding officers who interfered in his sexual assault cases and prosecutors who were reluctant to move forward with charges within the Canadian Armed Forces' justice system.
While working for the Canadian Armed Forces, Zillman said he developed a distrust of the military's internal justice system and came to believe criminal allegations should no longer be processed by the Forces' own police, prosecutors and judges.
One attempt called Operation Honour, "did not live up to its promise, an investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate has found."
In a four-year period from the start of Operation Honour in 2015, a recent study calculated the military had a 14 per cent conviction rate for sexual assault, lower than the 42 per cent conviction rate in the civilian judicial system across Canada.
Those watching the military justice system have been shaken over the past month as new allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced about the architect of Operation Honour himself.
And yet, Zillman could not point to actual interference by commanding officers. What he related were queries by commanding officers to discern the identity of personnel under their command who had been victims of misconduct. Zillman casts this in a nefarious light; however, that is not the only potential explanation.
ReplyDeleteIf I understand what was written in the online version of the report, a former MP - and we know very little of his background - says, vaguely, that COs interfered with his investigations.
There is an organization that was created under the NDA in 1998 to address this very concern: the Military Police Complaint Commission.
Within its mandate is the investigation of interference complaints, and, quite frankly, it is consistently looking for any reason to flex its statutory muscles in this regard. The former Sgt offers only vague examples of ‘interference’ and does not indicate if he ever made an ‘interference complaint’. In my experience, MPs are quick to assert their ‘independence’ and can get quite chippy about it. A senior officer was prosecuted because of such a clash of personalities: R v Wellwood, 2014 CM 1003; quashed on appeal: R v Wellwood, 2017 CMAC 4. I find it difficult to believe that, if he had encountered any real interference, Zillman would have hesitated to either assert his independence in a significant fashion and/or report the interference.
The one example he offers is a CO (or COs) asking for information about a complainant. This is presented in a nefarious tone. Let’s see, could there be a benign reason why a CO would want such information? Could it possibly be because CF leadership has been consistently criticized for not supporting subordinates who are complainants? It is difficult to support a complainant if you don’t know who it is.
So, in light of the general narrative that is being pursued, the nature of what the Sgt says, and doesn’t say, leaves me skeptical.
I also question whether he is qualified to comment on how prosecutors do their job. That’s not me being defensive on behalf of colleagues. I have been critical of DMP in the past. I actually think DMP prosecutors have pursued prosecutions that ought never have been pursued. They are dogged in their approach, because their workload is light, compared to civilian prosecutors. They are also aware that defence counsel are not limited by the accused’s wallet, so they have to be alive to frailties in their cases. Even then, they have pursued prosecutions that have had no chance of success. When Elaine Craig criticized the nature of plea resolutions under the CSD, she failed to consider whether part of the rationale was due to the weakness of the cases, and the desire of most stakeholders to obtain a conviction for anything, in order to justify a subsequent compulsory release.
On the other hand, I actually prefer defending against charges brought by MP rather than civilian police. The chance for investigative error is higher. And I’m not just randomly maligning MP investigations. I have had an opportunity to compare multiple MP investigations – specifically CFNIS Investigations - with different civilian police investigations. The difference in quality and timeliness is marked. Most CFNIS investigations, by ‘specially trained investigators’ like Sgt Zillman, take 8 to 12 months to complete, even where there are few witnesses to interview. I have yet to NOT bring one or more Charter motions/applications in matters investigated by the CFNIS. So, you’ll forgive me if I take what Sgt Zillman says with a grain of salt.