‘She was looking to destroy me’: convicted harasser faces new charges

When Agnieszka Ciochon-Newton moved into the 55-plus apartment building on Stradbrook Avenue last year, she came across as “timid, soft-spoken and sensitive,” said building manager Tanya Owen.

Little did Owen know the meek-looking 58-year-old woman would soon turn her life and the lives of many of her tenants upside down and threaten her career and family.

“She was looking to destroy me for a simple tenant disagreement,” Owen said Thursday.

Court records show Ciochon-Newton was arrested earlier this month and charged with seven counts of criminal harassment, two counts of uttering threats and one count each of fraud, breaking and entering, attempting to obstruct justice, intimidation of a justice official, mischief and defamatory libel.

Eleven victims are named in court documents, redacted versions of which were reviewed by the Free Press.

All but one of the charges involved offences alleged to have occurred between February and September of this year. One criminal harassment charge is alleged to have been committed over a span of 13 years beginning in 2013 and ending with her arrest.

The charges against Ciochon-Newton have not been proven in court and she is considered innocent. She remains in custody.

The former St. Boniface General Hospital nurse moved into the apartment building after serving a six-year prison sentence for criminal harassment and related offences involving four victims, including her former manager and a man who had rebuffed her romantic overtures.

Owen said she has received complaints from tenants about Ciochon-Newton claiming incidents of intimidation, threats and unwanted sexual advances.

Owen and tenant committee head Sandra Graham alleged Ciochon-Newton frequently gave money to vulnerable tenants to buy alcohol, drugs and household items and would later demand they repay the money.

“(Tenants) will come to the office and tell me about it, but when I ask them to put it in writing, they get scared,” Owen said.

Owen said Ciochon-Newton often prepared food for tenants and would leave it outside their apartment door. The relationship between the women soured, Owen said, after she sent Ciochon-Newton a letter saying she had to stop leaving food in the hallway because it would attract pests.

“She was looking to destroy me for a simple tenant disagreement.”

Ciochon-Newton responded with a text message “thanking” Owen for her “nasty letter.”

Later, Ciochon-Newton included Owen in a group chat in which she accused the building’s cleaner of illegally entering her suite. Owen said she pressed Ciochon-Newton to provide proof of her allegation.

“She could not provide me with proof and after that all hell broke loose,” Owen said.

Soon, Ciochon-Newton was firing off mass emails to her employer Ash Management, Premier Wab Kinew, Mayor Scott Gillingham, Manitoba Housing, and others “saying how I was coming in late, leaving early, specific things that I was doing that were false,” Owen said.

The emails were copied to a man Ciochon-Newton identified as her lawyer. Owen said she later recognized the man’s name as the same lawyer who represented a man with whom she had a traumatic relationship years earlier.

Owen said earlier in Ciochon-Newton’s tenancy, she had confided in her about her relationship with the man and other details from her personal life, details that Ciochon-Newton later included in a forged letter she showed tenants purportedly written by Owen seeking $50,000 from her.

“I honestly feel she looked me up in the system and she saw the lawyer and specifically sought out the exact same lawyer,” Owen said.

Ciochon-Newton turned her attention to Owen’s part-time employer, a downtown nightclub, telling managers in an email that she had contacted the Canada Revenue Agency to investigate Owen for not claiming her tips.

“(Tenants) will come to the office and tell me about it, but when I ask them to put it in writing, they get scared.”

In a long, rambling message reviewed by the Free Press, Ciochon-Newton repeated her complaints about Owen and the apartment building’s cleaner, provided pictures she said proved she had been assaulted by police and admitted to wearing AI glasses, which she used to record conversations.

Around this same time, Owen, a single mother, was contacted by Child and Family Services, who said they had received a complaint about her.

“I am a good mother,” she said. “I don’t have proof it was (Ciochon-Newton) but there is no one else who would call CFS on me and it just so happens as everything is going on all of a sudden I have CFS at my door.”

Graham alleged Ciochon-Newton targeted her for revenge after catching her in a lie about not receiving a food bank package.

“Shortly later, she posted a big notice on my door saying she was taking me to the human rights commission, (and telling) Wab Kinew, Scott Gillingham — all God’s children are getting a copy that she is getting a restraining order against me,” Graham said.

“She gave me a card telling me to get myself a lawyer because she had one,” she said.

Graham said she was preparing for a hot dog sale at the building when, a day before it was to take place, she was alerted by a health inspector they had received a written complaint claiming Graham should be tested for HIV/AIDS and hepatitis and didn’t wash her hands and smoked when she was cooking.

Graham said the health inspector would not disclose who filed the complaint, but it shared “the exact same wording” of a complaint about Graham included in Ciochon-Newton’s email to Owen’s nightclub employer.

Graham said Ciochon-Newton’s presence at the building has disrupted its close knit, friendly community.

“I honestly feel she looked me up in the system and she saw the lawyer and specifically sought out the exact same lawyer.”

“In normal summers, people are always outside in the afternoon shooting the breeze,” Graham said. “For some reason, no one was going outside. Everyone is keeping to themselves. There was an atmosphere of I think mistrust, gossip, negativity.”

Owen said she felt anxious every day about what would happen next.

“I came to work on a daily basis and I couldn’t actually do my own work because I was dealing with all the mass emails that she had sent and having to defend myself,” she said.

Ciochon-Newton’s next court date is Sept. 28.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca