A Toronto police sergeant has been found guilty of two counts of sexual assault for groping two women inside his police car in separate 2015 incidents.

Ontario Court Justice Philip Downes’ decision comes after a years-long legal saga that saw Sgt. Christopher Heard charged, found not guilty by a judge, and then retried this summer, after Crown lawyers successfully appealed his acquittal.

Downes was direct in his assessment of Heard, a 23-year veteran of the Toronto police who adamantly denied the allegations on the stand in June.

“In my view, he was not a credible witness. I do not believe him,” Downes wrote in his 18-page decision released at Scarborough court Thursday morning.

The judge did believe the two complainants, both young women who independently came forward with nearly identical accounts of a late-night pickup by Heard. Both said the officer approached them when they were alone in Toronto’s Entertainment District and offered a ride home.

Once alone inside the police vehicle with Heard, each woman said he groped her.

“I find that these women told the truth about what Sgt. Heard did to them: He touched them on their inner thigh near their vaginal areas without their consent,” Downes wrote. “That is a sexual assault.”

Heard, a married father of three, was comforted by his wife and a group of supporters minutes after Downes read out his decision. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for December.

Neither victim was present in court Thursday. Crown lawyer Peter Scrutton declined to comment.

The officer faces a maximum of three years in jail, or 18 months per complainant. Suspended with pay since May 2016, Heard would stop receiving his paycheque if he’s sentenced to time in jail; Ontario is the only province in Canada where, by law, police must be paid while suspended unless they are sent to jail.

Heard was released and walked swiftly out of court into a waiting car without speaking to reporters. Asked whether his client might consider an appeal, Heard’s lawyer Gary Clewley declined to comment.

Heard did not dispute that he picked up the women and drove them home but denied that he touched either woman. In both assaults, Heard failed to activate his police vehicle’s in-car camera system while alone in the car with a member of the public, contrary to police procedure.

The second incident occurred while Heard knew he was under investigation for the first by the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), Ontario’s civilian police watchdog.

The complainants — whose names are covered by a court-ordered publication ban — each retook the stand for the second trial, stressing that they got into Heard’s vehicle because they automatically trusted him.

“Both accepted that ride because it was being offered by a police officer,” Downes wrote.

Clewley’s defence centred on each woman having a motive to fabricate the allegations, which he argued was animus toward the police. Downes rejected the defence, finding neither woman had any reasons to make up the complaints.

“The defence would have it that two young women, both motivated to fabricate allegations of serious misconduct, just coincidentallly were picked up by the same officer and made, completely independently of each other, a false allegation of the exact same type of sexual assault in the exact same circumstances.

“It defies all logic and common sense,” the judge wrote.

In the first trial, Ontario Court Justice Russell Otter acknowledged both complainants had “strikingly similar” allegations against Heard. But he acquitted the officer in October 2017, finding that inconsistencies in each woman’s testimony led him to have reasonable doubt about whether the assaults occurred.

Last year, Ontario Court Justice Tamarin Dunnet ordered a new trial for Heard, after Crown lawyers appealed the acquittal, finding that Otter fell into a “pattern of cascading errors” en route to his not guilty findings.

Among his errors, the Crown alleged, was failing to sufficiently consider the fact that two women who were strangers to one another had come forward with allegations that were identical.

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There was no other “logical explanation … unless they actually occurred,” Crown lawyer Philip Perlmutter wrote in court filings arguing for an appeal.

Downes’ decision found that the similarities in each woman’s evidence helped to corroborate their evidence against Heard.

Janani Shanmuganathan, a Toronto lawyer who is not connected to the case, said the breach of trust element will likely play a role in the Crown’s submission on the appropriate sentence for Heard, who she said is “very likely” facing jail time. She noted the officer was on duty at the time, and both complainants believed they were safe in his company.

“It’s unfortunate, because something like this does erode trust.”

Sentencing submissions are scheduled for December 4.

Timeline

March 2016: Sgt. Christopher Heard is charged with one count of sexual assault. It’s alleged that on Sept. 24, 2015, he picked up a 27-year-old woman near Wellington Street and Blue Jays Way, offered her a ride home, then groped her in the car.

May 2016: Heard is charged with a second count of sexual assault. It’s alleged that on Nov 1, 2015, Heard picked up a 25-year-old woman near Blue Jays Way, offered her a ride home, then groped her in the car.

May - June 2017: The trial begins against Heard on two counts of sexual assault.

October 2017: Heard is acquitted on both counts. Ontario Court Justice Russell Otter finds Heard not guilty due to concerns about the reliability of the two complainants’ accounts.

October 2018: Justice Tamarin Dunnet orders a new trial for Heard, after Crown lawyers appealed Otter’s decision. Dunnet found that Otter may have erred in his decision to acquit.

June 2019: Heard is retried on both counts at the Scarborough courthouse. Both complainants retestify, and Heard also takes the stand against to deny the allegations.

September 2019: Justice Philip Downes finds Heard guilty of two counts of sexual assault.