Woman ‘does her level best to ruin people’s lives,’ court told

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This article was published 01/09/2021 (1530 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tormented and harassed for years after he resisted Agnieszka Ciochon-Newton’s romantic overtures, a Winnipeg man said he lived in constant fear her lies to police would put him in jail.

“As a result of these allegations and on numerous occasions, police attended to my home or place of work to arrest me,” the city firefighter told a sentencing hearing Tuesday. “Every day I mentally prepared myself for the reality that I may go to jail if I were unable to prove the allegations were false.”

Ciochon-Newton, a former Winnipeg nurse, has pleaded guilty to charges of criminal harassment, public mischief, obstruction of justice and other offences involving four victims.

“The accused is a person who does her level best to ruin people’s lives,” said Crown attorney Sheila Doe, who recommended provincial court Judge Keith Eyrikson sentence Ciochon-Newton to eight years in prison.

Ciochon-Newton, 53, her greying hair pulled back in a ponytail, paced anxiously back and forth in the prisoner’s box during Doe’s morning-long sentencing submission.

“She is a versatile criminal who has shown zero remorse and no indication that she is slowing down at her age,” Doe said.

Ciochon-Newton’s first victim, a former manager at St. Boniface Hospital, endured years of harassment and stalking both at work and at home, leading to her early retirement.

“The depths to which (she) pursued me I thought only existed in bad movies,” the woman told court in a victim impact statement. “The pain (she) has inflicted on my family can never be (repaired). I just want this to stop once and for all.”

Ciochon-Newton was a registered nurse at the hospital in 2013 when supervisors, concerned about her performance, placed her in a practice management program, with a manager overseeing her work.

Unhappy with the manager’s instructions, Ciochon-Newton began bombarding senior hospital administrators, the Manitoba Nurses Union and College of Registered Nurses with letters and emails full of “derogatory remarks… and untrue allegations,” Doe said at a court hearing earlier this year.

Ciochon-Newton was placed on administrative leave and ultimately fired.

In September 2013, Ciochon-Newton contacted the Canadian Border Services Agency and claimed the victim was going to be “the next Connecticut shooter,” prompting a call to the FBI, which opened an investigation into the victim’s activities.

In December 2016, Ciochon-Newton called the woman at work, and claimed she was sleeping with her husband. Over the next several months, Ciochon-Newton left the woman numerous voicemail messages containing “female shrieks, panting and sexualized moaning,” Doe said.

Ciochon-Newton called city police in March 2017, claiming a man armed with a knife had been driving by her house and following her, and gave police the licence plate number of the victim’s husband’s car. Weeks later, she called police to say the victim was sitting in her car outside her apartment, armed with a gun. Ciochon-Newton made similar allegations in the months that followed.

“It is painful to think a person could be so cruel to direct such hate,” the woman’s husband said in his own victim impact statement. “We have been catastrophically hurt and harmed by this woman’s harassment.”

By late 2017, Ciochon-Newton shifted her attention to another victim, a firefighter she met at a yard sale. The two exchanged phone numbers after Ciochon-Newton asked the man if he would be interested in doing some renovation work at her Osborne Village-area condo.

The man later met Ciochon-Newton for coffee at her home, but backed out of doing any work for her after comments that made him uncomfortable.

As the man tried to distance himself from her, Ciochon-Newton continued to leave messages and letters for him, as well as “gift” packages outside his house.

The two hadn’t seen each other for about a year when, in October 2019, Ciochon-Newton left the man a voicemail claiming she had cancer and was going blind. After he responded with a sympathetic text she showed up days later at his house and saw him sitting at his dining room table with his girlfriend. Ciochon-Newton left and a barrage of angry text messages followed, calling the man “a cheater” and “worthless.”

A week later, the man arrived home to find a stranger peering through his deck window. Asked what he was doing, the stranger said he was there to meet a woman he had talked to online “for an intimate encounter.”

Later that night, the victim received a text from a second man through dating website Ashley Madison, seeking directions to get into his house.

The man’s adult daughter was living with him at the time. “The thought of what could have potentially happened to my 29-year-old after being confronted by a stranger in her own home who, under the direction of this woman, would have let himself in with the expectation of getting sexual pleasure sickens me,” the man told court Tuesday.

Ciochon-Newton continued to harass the man, filing bogus complaints with his union and city police, and posting derogatory messages and doctored photographs on Facebook.

When the man secured a protection order against her, Ciochon-Newton countered with one of her own, claimed he was following her and filed a police complaint alleging he had sexually assaulted her.

Ciochon-Newton pleaded guilty to additional counts of fraud, forgery and theft, involving a now-89-year-old acquaintance from whom she stole and forged cheques for several thousand dollars last September. She also pleaded guilty to public mischief after falsely accusing a Club Regent casino security guard of sexually assaulting her in a washroom.

Defence submissions were adjourned to the fall after Eyrikson was told Legal Aid had not approved funding to secure a psychiatric report for Ciochon-Newton.

“I have some serious concerns about the mental health of your client,” Eyrikson told defence lawyer Barry Walker. “I am befuddled by Legal Aid’s decision not to assist you.

“It is only appropriate that you would seek a report in this case. If they deny you funding I may ask that they come here and explain why.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca