ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — A five-month chat log hundreds of pages long, spanning email and text message and including requests for nude pictures, the exchange of photos and talk of school, curfews and sneaking out of the house: that’s the evidence police say they collected before arresting Jeffrey Fowler and charging him with attempting to lure a child online.
Fowler’s trial ended Tuesday in provincial court in St. John’s, but none of those documents had been entered as evidence, leaving the judge with nothing to consider but the testimony of the investigating officer, a copy of the original ad and a brief innocuous text exchange between Fowler and an alleged 15-year-old girl sent moments before his arrest.
“There were written messages. Where are they?” Judge Lois Skanes asked prosecutor Jennifer Colford. “You haven’t given me any of them. I’ve nothing. Tell me, what do I do with that?”
Fowler, 31, has admitted to posting a classified ad on Craigslist in June 2016 under the title “Rainy day boredom.” The ad indicated it had been posted by a woman, looking to chat with other women.
“Hey, crappy day out, anyone want to chat, see where it goes? Up for anything, have pics to share xo,” the ad read.
RNC Const. Terry Follett, then working as an investigator in the internet child exploitation section of a joint RNC/RCMP unit, testified he had replied to the ad, using the covert identity of a 15-year-old bisexual girl and asking, “Is that too young for you?”
Over the next five months, Follett participated in a series of emails and text messages with the person who replied to his message, who said they were a 21-year-old woman from Kilbride. The conversation was often sexual, with the woman asking for nude and sexy photos and, in one case, a video. In return, she reportedly sent Follett’s covert teenage identity a topless picture of herself. The photo was actually of a woman Fowler had met on an online dating site, the court heard.
The conversation, which Follett testified had included references to his covert identity being in school and living with her mom, ended in November 2016 after police traced the texts to Fowler’s phone and arrested him. A forensic examination of the cellphone revealed the investigator’s phone number as a contact with no name, and a short text conversation.
The court heard Fowler regularly freed up space on his phone by erasing texts and emails.
In a video of Fowler’s interview with police that was shown to the court, he said he couldn’t recall chatting with a 15-year-old. He said he regularly exchanged texts with a woman he had met online who had a similar phone number to the young girl and he may have gotten confused, thinking he was chatting with the woman. He told police that a number of other people knew his cellphone’s password and had access to it.
“Somebody would have had to take and use his phone on a regular basis,” Colford argued. “You think one might say what’s going on here, why do you need it?”
“A person who posts a personal ad and receives a response from someone saying, ‘I’m 15 years old,’ but doesn’t ask any other questions is beyond reckless." — Prosecutor Jennifer Colford
Colford submitted that Fowler had been wilfully blind and is therefore guilty.
“A person who posts a personal ad and receives a response from someone saying, ‘I’m 15 years old,’ but doesn’t ask any other questions is beyond reckless,” she argued. “It’s not just recklessness, it’s wilful blindness.”
Skanes noted she hadn’t been provided with the message in which Follett’s covert identity said she was 15.
“Here we have a situation where it’s an undercover officer telling me this. But what if it wasn’t? What would I make of that?” the judge asked. “There’s all kinds of stuff that’s available and none of it has been put before the court to look at and evaluate if there’s anything of a sexual nature.”
“Ultimately the issue the court has to decide is whether it is satisfied that the evidence put before them is enough to convict,” Colford replied, offering no explanation why the documents weren’t submitted.
Defence lawyer Rosellen Sullivan asked Skanes to “draw a negative inference” from the fact that police had the chat log and photos, but they weren’t tendered as evidence in court.
She submitted there had been no proof presented at trial that Fowler had been aware of the covert identity’s age or had responded to the “Is that too young?” email. There had been no evidence presented that conflicted Fowler’s argument that he had been confused about who he was chatting with, she said, and no evidence that a photo of a topless woman had been sent from his phone number.
“What you are left with as proof beyond a reasonable doubt of knowledge of age is that Const. Follett said he wrote, ‘I’m 15 and bi, is that too young?’ We don’t know anything else and have no context around that. I would submit to you that is certainly not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Skanes will deliver her verdict March 18.
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
