He’s not a registered sex offender. He’s not, as they say, “known to police.” He has no criminal record. He’s a 23-year-old artist who recently married in a simple ceremony at city hall. He has a supportive dad, good friends. And he’s afraid to go outside. Because last week he went to the grocery store wearing a hoodie and black boots – moments after a girl said she had been attacked by someone wearing a hoodie and black boots – and he instantly became a suspect in a despicable crime. And in that same instant, he became a victim.

Police do not apologize for doing what they say needed to be done to guarantee public safety. They are concerned for the little girl. And they feel badly for the suspect. They cleared him a week ago. But has the public? He’s not sure. The Free Press tracked him down last week. Because he fears for his safety, he asked us to protect his identity. We’ll call him Ian.

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IN THE EYES OF THE SUSPECT

It was Thursday, June 13. Ian hadn’t read the news.

He had no idea police were searching for a masked man after an attack was reported not far from the grocery store where he’d picked up his prescription before lunchtime.

There was a knock at the door about 4 p.m. Two police officers.

“Oh, hi,” he said, going out to the front porch, closing the door behind him to keep the dogs inside.

‘Were you at the Metro today, Wellington and Commissioners?’ he says they asked after confirming his name.

Yes, said Ian, as three more police cruisers pulled up out front.

The handcuffs were on in a second. He was . . . ‘under arrest for assault,’ they told him.

“I’m like, ‘Whoa. What?’ ”

The feelings rushed through him. He was confused, nervous and embarrassed, but not scared. Not yet.

He kept calm, answered their questions so politely they took his cuffs off while they escorted him to the back so he could let out the dogs. They’d have to go in and check the place out.

It was a ridiculous mistake, but they’d sort it out soon, he thought, as the officers put him in a cruiser and took him to the station.

Inside, someone took his height: 5-foot-11. His weight: 130 pounds

They asked if he wanted a lawyer. He didn’t.

Ian thought of where he’d been that day: Cabbed it to his old place with his new husband to pick up clothes before his husband went on to work. Walked from there to the Metro Plaza across Wellington at Commissioners where he picked up a prescription at the grocery store. Stopped at the post office and back to the grocery store before cabbing home to the new place across town.

“I’m like, ‘I don’t need (a lawyer) because I didn’t do anything wrong,’ ” he says.

His walking route — along businesses that likely had video surveillance — brought him comfort. Tall and lanky, pierced and tattooed, he’s used to people noticing him, although sometimes with distrust, disdain.

“In my brain, I’m like ‘I’m going to be let go . . . this is mistaken identity.’ ”

Still, police said before putting him in a holding cell, he should talk to someone. He agreed and was taken to a room with a phone with no keypad.

He picked it up and it was “some advice lady” (providing a provincial legal aid service) who told him not to talk, that his words could be twisted. ‘You should be let go by the end of the day,’ she said.

Ian was taken into a single holding cell. It was small, with a toilet that had a sink out the top of it. Hours later, he’d be so thirsty he’d consider drinking out of one of those toilet sinks. But not yet.

The cell was barred and covered with bulletproof glass. It had a concrete slab the size of a couch.

Anxiety was setting in. This was taking too long. He wanted to contact his dad, his husband, his roommates — anybody — but police had his phone. He’d had his one call.

He waited, it seemed like forever, then finally a detective would see him.

“I’m like, ‘OK, now we can finally figure this all out.’ ”

Asked about his day, he described it carefully to the detective.

The detective was quiet. Then this:

‘Did you assault a three-year-old girl?’ That broke him. (The complainant was actually 12).

“I burst into tears . . . I was beside myself,” recalls Ian, who has a nine-year-old brother. “I said ‘I cannot believe I’m here for this . . . I feel like I’m in a nightmare.’ ”

Ian would break down again and again before the three-hour interrogation ended at 11 p.m.

Mostly, he tried to remain calm, but it was tough to take questions about whether his mental health — he suffers from bipolar disorder — would trigger him to hurt a child. It was hard to stay stoic under the eye of a stranger scrutinizing his face, his piercings, his tattoos, his self.

‘You’re pretty messed up,’ the detective said.

He says another detective entered at one point and asked him if he was wearing cargo pants earlier. He wasn’t. Funny, the man on the video had cargo pants on, she said, then asked if he had some at home.

“I said ‘No! I would NEVER wear cargo pants.’ ”

The original detective also asked Ian whether police would find a mask or gloves in his backpack — two items the girl said her attacker was wearing.

Just after 11 p.m., the officer said something that put real fear into Ian.

“He says, ‘I’m convinced. I know it was you. Just tell me why.’ ”

Ian says when he protested the detective shut him down. “He said, ‘That’s over now. . . Just tell me why. The family deserves to know.’ ”

Frustrated, anxious and alone, Ian stopped. He wanted a lawyer now. Was it too late? He had been there seven hours. He was starting to freak. Did anybody know where he was?

He had no idea his home had been searched and cordoned, his roommates had rushed home from a trip to Hamilton but couldn’t get in, his landlord had been questioned by police, his husband had been sent away with no information other than that Ian was in jail. No idea his worried dad was trying to get an early flight home from a business trip to Minneapolis after several calls to police ­ — who would only say his son would need a good lawyer.

Ian was led back to cells — this time he had a double.

Minutes turned into hours as he sat rocking back and forth. He had a cellmate — a “huge guy” for about 45 minutes. People in cells around him came and went, vomited, defecated on the floor.

He was thirsty. He kept looking over at the sink atop the toilet. Not that thirsty. He couldn’t do it.

Ian had never seen anything like this. Shivering in his t-shirt, socks and pants, he was too cold to sleep. Instead, he spent the night sitting, standing, pacing, lying on the slab of concrete, on the floor.

He started thinking the worse. What if it didn’t get sorted out. What if he was sent to jail.

“That’s the last place I want to go,” he says. “Because of my sexuality, my weight and what I’m accused of, (I’d) be targeted.”

Morning came. It dragged. Then, at 10:30 a.m. — 16 hours after his arrest — a guard entered and said the detective would see him again.

He could go home.

‘We’ve got you all on video. You were exactly where you said you were, so it checks out. So you’re being released,’ the detective said.

“I was trying to be normal. I said ‘My name is not going to be released is it?’ ”

No, the detective said. ‘You were a lot of help, so thanks for your co-operation.”

“I left the station . . . I paid for a cab. It was about $15.”

--- --- ---

Ian read about the reported assault he’d been a suspect in for the first time on Friday — after getting out of jail. “That’s when I read it was a 12-year-old,” he says. “Weird.”

Police still had the new place blocked off, so he went back to the place he’s moving out of. The phone rang. It was the detective.

“She fabricated the story.”

“Oh.”

--- --- ---

“This man would have been known to police and in their minds, due to his history, capable of such a crime,” wrote one commenter on theFree Presswebsite lfpress.com under a story last Friday about police arresting and releasing a man.

“But, what would have and could have happened if the police had not locked down a suspected child predator?” wrote another.

And they went on until the comments were shut down.

“I’m sure one of the first things the police do after an assault like this is check the non-public child sexual offender ‘list,’ ” wrote another.

In an interview at Ian’s home, his dad says he’s disturbed by such comments. “Not the type of thing you’d want people thinking about you,” he says.

--- --- ---

In the midst of moving into his new home when police handcuffed him in front of his new neighbours, “now we have to move,’’ Ian says. “ We won’t have piece of mind until we go . . . we’re leaving the city.”

On Saturday, a day after Ian was released, someone in a passing car hurled a pop bottle on the front lawn of the new place. The words they shouted out their window, “child molester,” landed harder.

“I’m paranoid, completely paranoid right now,” Ian says. “I don’t want to leave the house. I’m afraid to walk outside so I don’t. “

Asked what he wants to come of all this, he doesn’t know.

“I don’t want to sound too dramatic about it like I want someone fired — that wouldn’t help me,” he says. “What I do want is to feel safe.”

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IN THE EYES OF THE POLICE

London police responded to Sir George Etienne Cartier public school at 11:29 a.m. Thursday, June 13, after a report an adult male assaulted a girl in the yard.

After asking a few questions, officers figured the alleged incident happened about 10 minutes earlier, says Det. Insp. Kevin Heslop, head of the force’s investigations branch.

Asked for a description, the girl said the attacker wore a ski mask, black gloves, boots and pants and a grey hooded sweatshirt. His arms felt muscular and he was taller than her 5-foot-2 teacher, she said.

Though that description was released to the media, Heslop says police had to consider it was coming from a child and that descriptions after any traumatic event are almost never accurate.

“I can almost guarantee you that when we find (a suspect), it’s going to be different than the description provided,” he says, when asked to reconcile how officers would end up arresting a thin 5’11” later that day man while looking for a muscular 5’2” man.

--- --- ---

In retrospect, the story seems outrageous. So why did the school go into lock-down mode?

And why couldn’t trained police investigators sniff out a lie?

For one thing, they don’t operate on “instinct,” Heslop says.

“Initially, very early on during complaints that turn out to be false, there will be indications that the incident did not occur but the complainant is adamant that it did,” he says. “Whether we believe the complaint is suspicious or whether we don’t, we have to consider public safety and we have to err on the side of caution every time.

“Because if we are wrong the consequences can be dire.”

Normally, he says, the truth surfaces when a suspect doesn’t.

“Quite often in a false situation no one is arrested because the person doesn’t exist. But in this case . . . we find a person wearing a hoodie and black boots 600 metres away from the scene 13 minutes later.”

Just north of the school is the Metro Plaza at Wellington and Commissioners, where the oblivious man we’re callng Ian was picking up a prescription.

People noticed him, they usually do. He’s noticeable — from his unique facial piercings to the black lace-up boots he wears, even in the heat of the summer. And in the store that day, he had his hood up over his head.

So when police went around looking for a suspect, someone mentioned Ian, who had by then left in a taxi. Officers checked the video and found someone who “appears to match the description,” says Heslop. “The person obviously is not wearing a (balaclava) but he does (appear to) have a grey hooded sweatshirt, black pants and black boots. He is also wearing a backpack.”

He had his hood up over his head, Heslop says.

(Ian’s jeans were dark blue but likely looked black on camera. His jacket is stitched to look like a grey hooded sweatshirt with a denim vest overtop.)

Police got his identity — he wasn’t a suspect in their system — his address and went to his home.

Ian was helpful, polite, co-operative, Heslop says. But he matched the description as well as police could expect and he was in the area. They had to do what they had to do.

The officers were diligent. They needed to get Ian to the police station and secure his house — which means search it to make sure there was no evidence inside — a balaclava, for example — and also no victims or even young children belonging to the suspect.

You have to check these things, Heslop says. What if Ian had a baby in his care inside?

As is usual, they cordoned off the house and no one was allowed inside until the investigation was over.

At the station, Ian was processed and questioned. It’s a methodical process, Heslop says, and everything is managed carefully.

It was a few hours before a detective would see him. Ian answered the questions thoroughly, he told police where he had been before Metro — at the time of the reported attack.

While plans were put in motion to check out the alibi, interrogation techniques include asking many questions, many ways.

They tried to get a read on him.

But no matter what they asked or what they suggested, Ian stuck to the truth.

Police have never released the identity of the man who agreed to speak only after aFree Press reporter who had received a tip contacted him, and only on condition of anonymity.

Heslop — who repeatedly stressed police are concerned for the girl at the centre of the controversy, that she needs support, compassion and understanding —says police also want to help the man “in the aftermath of what occurred.”

After The Free Press raised his concerns with police this week, Ian received a call about police support services. Police will also reimburse his return-home taxi costs, Heslop says.

“From a personal perspective, it really is unfortunate that he was arrested, given that we later determined he was not in any way involved, but there were ample grounds for the investigators to make him a suspect until we investigated further,” Heslop says.

“He has not had any involvement with the police, is not an offender, and was polite and co-operative with the investigators,” Heslop says. “It’s his co-operation with us that allowed us to reach the conclusion that we did.”

That conclusion — he didn’t do it — came before the other conclusion — it never happened — and both at a high cost to Ian, who spent the night shivering on the cold cement floor of a holding cell.

It took more than three hours, and by the time the detectives were done interviewing him and were ready to check his alibi, it was after 11 p.m.

Too late to knock on doors.

It would have to wait until morning, and so would he.

“We work as hard to clear someone of a crime as we do to charge them,” Heslop says.

“We are certainly sorry he experienced anxiety and we fully understand that, but we don’t apologize for our officers’ actions because they did exactly what they should have done.”

jennifer.obrien@sunmedia.ca