WINNIPEG—A former Manitoba RCMP recruitment officer has been given 90 days in jail after he admitted to having consensual sex with a 17-year-old girl who was considering a career in policing.

Michael Adam Timmer was sentenced last month after he pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation.

Court heard the 34-year-old man met the girl in 2014 and they exchanged thousands of text messages before they had sex at his home.

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The girl’s parents found out what was happening the next year and filed a complaint with the RCMP.

Charges were laid following an investigation by Winnipeg police and the officer resigned in 2016 after six years with the Mounties.

The relationship was considered a crime because Timmer met the teen in his professional capacity as a police officer.

Timmer said he acted in a “moment of weakness.”

“This isolated moment of poor judgment has cost me everything. My entire adult life was dedicated to becoming the best police officer I could be,” he said during his sentencing hearing. “With a single lapse of judgment, a moment of weakness, I lost all of that.”

Court was told Timmer met the teen, a prospective RCMP cadet, during his duties working in recruitment for the Manitoba RCMP.

They travelled together with other prospective cadets to the RCMP training depot in Regina for a weeklong summer program, during which three of the teen girls needed to be transported to hospital and Timmer gave them his personal cellphone number in case of emergency.

About a week after the trip, then-32-year-old Timmer and the 17-year-old exchanged about 3,500 text messages and had sex.

Crown prosecutor Ronald Toews told court the teen was reluctant to talk to the Winnipeg police professional standards unit during its investigation, but she eventually gave a full statement.

She said she didn’t want to see the officer go to jail and didn’t submit a victim-impact statement.

Ninety days is the mandatory minimum sentence for sexual exploitation, and provincial court Judge Dale Harvey imposed it based on a joint recommendation from the Crown and defence lawyer Hymie Weinstein.

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The judge said he would have liked to hear from the young woman directly to get a better idea of how she’s doing.

As part of his sentence, Timmer must follow a court-ordered condition that prevents him from being in a position of authority over anyone under 18.

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