A former Toronto police officer, who lost his job after he was convicted and jailed for assaulting a civilian, has been sentenced to three years in prison for sexually assaulting a security company co-worker in northern Ontario.

Roy Preston was sentenced last month after a judge found him guility in December of sexually assaulting Destiny Douglas on Aug. 1, 2015 while they were both employed with Toronto-based Cancom Security. Preston was 46 at the time, Douglas 19.

Preston has filed an appeal and has been released on bail.

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At his sentencing hearing at the Gore Bay courthouse, the judge agreed to Douglas’s request to waive the automatic publication ban requiring her anonymity.

“I didn’t want to stay quiet about this because this is often a battle fought in silence and alone,” Douglas wrote in an email of her decision to speak out. She has set up a Facebook page for victims of sexual assault called Life After.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Alex Kurke convicted Preston, now 49, after a trial where Douglas testified about two separate incidents with Preston on the Manitoulin Country Fest grounds. They and several other Cancom employees were camping in advance of providing security and other services at a summer festival.

Douglas testified Preston, who had trained her for a week in July, groped her while they carried firewood together and that she left no doubt she wasn’t interested.

Despite the rebuff, Preston later came into the trailer where she was going to sleep and raped her, Douglas told court. Preston’s lawyer, Margaret Bojanowska, argued the groping did not occur and that Douglas, for financial reasons, “crafted an implausible rape story from a consensual encounter,” according to the judgment.

The judge believed Douglas. Preston did not testify.

“He (Preston) knew that the complainant was not consenting, but he hoped to get her consent as he went, and really did not care if she consented or not,” Kurke wrote. “He never did secure the complainant’s consent, but he chose to keep going anyway.”

Reading from her victim impact statement, Douglas told the judge the impact of the assault on her life has been “unimaginable, emotionally, psychologically, physically,” and the legal process horrendous. She referred to Preston as a “mentor.”

“Imagine being required to remember the most shameful night of your life. I felt extremely violated and still feel that way.” She has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), according to the judgment.

During his sentencing submissions, Crown Attorney Kenrick Abbott told the judge Preston had a previous assault charge relating to use of force, which ultimately cost him his job, according to the Manitoulin Expositor.

He was referring to Preston, while a Toronto police constable, sucker-punching Said Jama Jama in 2003. The punch was caught on video and received widespread media attention. Two years later, Preston was convicted of assault, sentenced to 30 days in jail and was ultimately fired by the Toronto Police Service.

Preston lost two appeals.

“The appellant took part in a serious unprovoked assault on a civilian and then to cover up his involvement attempted to fabricate evidence that could have led to the conviction of an innocent man,” the Ontario Court of Appeal said in 2008.

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“His entire course of conduct represented an appalling breach of trust. We agree with the appeal judge that the sentence imposed was, if anything, on the lenient side.”

In an email to the Star this week, Douglas wrote she believes the sexual assault was preventable “if the company we both worked for had done their due diligence in their hiring process and did not overlook ... the previous criminal charge and conviction of Mr Preston.”

Ronald Wells, owner of Cancom, said the company did not overlook Preston’s history, and that he had been “forthright” about his past.

“The way we took it was well here’s a guy who suffered the consequences, lost his job, who not better to teach our staff what not to do... and how to govern themselves in the course of their duties,” Wells said.

“I asked him to share his experience with candidates and he did. He didn’t try to hide it.”

Preston also held a valid provinically-issued security guard licence, his assault conviction not being among a long list of disqualifying offences, Wells said.

According to a spokesperson for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, the provincial registrar considers past convictions, even those that are not on the list of disqualifying offences, before granting a private security licence.

“Applicants must disclose all outstanding criminal charges or convictions for which they have not received a pardon — including those not found under the Regulation,” wrote Brent Ross in an email.

Preston, who worked part-time for the company for about half a year in 2015, was terminated after the sexual assault charge was laid, Wells said. He added there were no other complaints about his conduct.

“We as a company are very saddened. It’s very upsetting.”

Preston had also been working, as recently as September 2016, according to a Metroland article, as a firearms instructor with the Mississauga-based Queen’s College of Business, Technology and Public Safety.

“He is no longer employed,” a woman answering the phone said this week. “We won’t be able to answer any more questions.”

Preston declined to comment for this article, according to lawyer Chris Sewrattan, who has filed the appeal on Preston’s behalf.