An incumbent in Whitby’s last town council election had her former websites “hijacked” and used to post disparaging, embarrassing statements under her name during a tight race for Centre Ward in 2010.

More than two years later, Shirley Scott obtained the police report on the investigation into the websites through a Freedom of Information request, and learned the site was registered to an election rival who ultimately beat her by several hundred votes.

According to the police documents, the websites www.voteshirleyscott.com and www.voteshirleyscott.ca were registered to Michael Emm, who is now incumbent councillor for the ward.

In the report, Emm’s name is redacted but the phrase following the name, “the election opponent to SCOTT and winner of the election,” is not. The detective who investigated the case confirmed the sites were registered to Emm.

Scott said she got a phone call in September 2010 —just one month before the election — notifying her that something seemed amiss on the websites she had used in her previous bid for a seat in 2006.

The site contained some “political stuff which is normal in elections,” according to the police report. But it also contained a long, meandering section where the writer blathered about other councillors, including references to one’s children burning down a barn and another having a “past in dirty movies,” among other references.

Emm did not respond to numerous requests for comment, including emails, messages left with town council staff and voice mails left on his home and cellphone lines.

It is not known who purchased the websites after Scott failed to renew her rights to the domain names, or who actually posted the content online.

The “hijacked” version of Scott’s site contained a photo of Councillor Elizabeth Roy’s 7-year-old child, apparently taken from her Facebook account, and photos of Roy, Scott and several others with captions referencing excessive drinking, drinking and driving, referring to another election candidate as “Mr. Porn” and alleging he was grabbing a woman’s breast.

“What was in there was just ridiculous,” said Scott, who had served on town council since 1994. “It was horrible, just horrible. . . . It’s very embarrassing when somebody does what they did.”

Roy and Scott complained to Durham police. And Roy succeeded in having the website containing the image of her daughter, www.voteshirleyscott.ca , taken down by complaining to the company that owned the domain, U.S.-based GoDaddy.

Roy said, as a politician, you expect a certain amount of trickery — things like disappearing lawn signs — from opponents. But this went too far, said Roy, who was re-elected in the town’s west ward.

“To stoop down to such a level, it’s really sad,” she said.

Scott lost the 2010 election by 323 votes.

Det. Larry Nobbs, who retired from Durham Regional Police earlier this year, launched an investigation in September 2010 after receiving the complaint from Roy and Scott.

Over the next 28 months, he determined the site was purchased in March 2010 and Emm’s name was listed as the registrant. But to find out who had actually bought the site from GoDaddy, Nobbs needed a production order with international clout to compel the U.S. company to provide the information.

That would have required a lengthy, time-consuming process involving federal officials in Ottawa and the head Crown. It was determined that it would take too much time and too many of the resources of the stretched investigative unit in Whitby.

“That just didn’t seem the most prudent use of taxpayers’ money,” said Nobbs. “It was very frustrating. I ran out of options.”

He said the Municipal Affairs ministry, which oversees municipal election laws, told him the alleged actions didn’t violate any provincial rules.

The case wrapped up in January 2013 when Nobbs and an assistant Crown attorney determined there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute. The case lacked proof of who posted the material and proof that the material went beyond “nasty election campaigning and entered the criminal fraud world,” according to the police document.

Scott tried to buy the domain name back last March, when the two-year subscription was to expire. She said GoDaddy informed her the rights to the site had been renewed by the previous holder.

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As of Friday, www.voteshirleyscott.com redirected to a YouTube clip from the 1980 film Airplane! where Leslie Nielsen responds to another actor saying, “Surely you can’t be serious,” with “Don’t call me Shirley.”

Scott said she doesn’t plan to pursue any other action, but wants people to know it wasn’t her.

“I don’t want people to think that I wrote that and that I put that on the Internet,” said Scott. “If you’ve tried to live a good, you’ve tried to be a good person . . . and somebody comes along and tries to destroy you with stuff like that, it hurts. It’s very hurting.”