Sexual-assault conviction reinstated for former RCMP officer

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This article was published 11/06/2024 (458 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former RCMP officer’s conviction for molesting a nine-year-old girl in 2014 has been reinstated by Manitoba’s highest court.

Robert Allen Dowd, who is now in his early 60s, was first convicted of assaulting the girl after a trial in 2017.

The conviction was overturned and a new trial was ordered after the Manitoba Court of Appeal ruled in 2020 that the original sentencing judge erred in assessing Dowd’s credibility.

Dowd was again convicted of sexual interference in Manitoba’s provincial court in 2021 and sentenced to 18 months and a year of supervised probation.

The second conviction was also appealed and overturned. Crown prosecutors then appealed that decision.

The Court of Appeal ruled, in a written decision issued May 16, that the second conviction will be upheld and that Dowd must serve a year in jail.

Dowd was accused of assaulting the nine-year-old victim when he was off-duty during a bonfire party in the Interlake. He had met her, along with her father and brother, earlier that day.

Prosecutors alleged Dowd was “stargazing” while alone with the girl when he put his hands under her clothes and fondled her for about three minutes.

Dowd denied the allegation, testifying at trial the only time he was alone with the girl was when he took her to his motor home to use the bathroom, where he showed her how to use the toilet. He said he waited for about 10 minutes outside, lost track of her and didn’t see where she went when she left the recreational vehicle.

The 2021 trial judge, Keith Eyrikson, said he found significant difficulty with the credibility of Dowd’s testimony. The judge said it defied common sense and logic that Dowd, a former RCMP officer and grandfather, wouldn’t help the girl get back to the campfire on a cold dark night.

Eyrikson said it did not make sense that the girl would have disappeared after using the toilet and then returned to the campfire at the same time as Dowd.

The 2021 trial judge said he made his ruling on testimony from Dowd, the girl and witnesses, as there was no forensic evidence.

After the 2021 guilty verdict, a judge that reviewed the conviction overturned it, saying the trial judge made unlawful assumptions about how Dowd would be expected to act as a granddad and retired Mountie. The Appeal Court judges said that was the wrong interpretation.

Justice Anne Turner, who wrote the decision also signed by Justices Marc Monnin and Janice leMaistre, said Eyrikson’s overall credibility findings weren’t based on assumptions, generalizations or stereotypes.

“When the trial judge’s reasons are read as a whole, the reasons for disbelieving the accused’s evidence are not grounded in assumptions or stereotypes,” the May 16 decision states.

Instead, Turner wrote, the trial judge did not believe Dowd’s evidence for several articulated reasons, including inconsistencies, and relied on common sense and reason to come to his conclusion.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca