With a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit, Donald Dummer hopped in his car and started his drive from Essex to Leamington.

He said he had an appointment that he didn’t want to miss, but while making his way along Highway 3 on the morning of March 17, the 55-year-old struggling alcoholic pulled onto the shoulder of the road, turned on his hazard lights and called 911.

For the man who has battled alcoholism most of his life, he says making the call that spring morning was a turning point in his life.

“I was at what I felt was the bottom. So I made the call,” he said outside the provincial courthouse where he pleaded guilty to impaired driving charges on Tuesday. He received a $1,400 fine, a one-year driving ban and 12 months of probation.

He explained to the operator he was too drunk to drive. Police arrived shortly after to find Dummer and a half-empty mickey of Wiser’s whisky in the vehicle. His blood alcohol level registered at 290 milligrams, well outside Ontario’s drinking and driving laws.

Those are “rock-star numbers,” defence lawyer Daniel Topp conceded in court. But Topp commended Dummer for turning himself in, suggesting that component of the incident should factor in to his punishment.

Crown attorney Craig Houle disagreed, saying Dummer has a history of impaired driving, referring to convictions in 1985 and 1994. Houle also suggested the staggering blood alcohol levels that morning illustrate a severe history of alcoholism.

“For most individuals, at that level, they wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call because they’d be passed out or otherwise unconscious,” he told the court.

Dummer will also have to complete whatever rehabilitation programs prescribed to him by his probation officer, explained Justice Ronald Marion.

Dummer agrees with the Crown’s assessment of his battle with alcohol. Outside the courthouse, he said he already had plans to check into Brentwood Recovery Home before calling the police on himself that morning, but he was waiting for a spot to open up.

He knew he needed help, but thought he could handle himself until he could get admitted. Then came the moment on Highway 3.

“I have an alcohol issue, like a sincere one, which I’ve known for years and I just pulled the rug out from under myself and said I’ve had enough,” he said.

That moment in the car, when he realized he needed help, will stand as a strong reminder of how dangerous his addiction can become.

“I was about halfway there, when I thought: What am I doing?” he said in a brief interview.

Dummer has been in Brentwood for 70 days and plans to move to a community just outside Chatham where he has a hotel manager job waiting for him once he completes his rehabilitation program.

The hardest part about his experience was realizing he couldn’t do this on his own.

“After numerous tries, I needed help,” he said.

dspalding@windsorstar.com

twitter.com/Derek_Spalding

Porn addict Frank Froese fantasized about having sex with a boy. So, in September 2012, he advertised for one on Craigslist.

“Married man — craving… young boy — the younger the better.”

What Froese attracted, however, was an undercover police officer posing as a 15-year-old named Alex. Within a week of initiating sexually explicit online conversations with his prey — including trying to set up a meeting – Froese was arrested at his Leamington home.

On Tuesday, Froese, 35, was sentenced to one year in jail followed by three years’ probation. He will be on the national sex-offender registry for 20 years and for the next decade can’t be near a playground, public park, school or any other place where children are normally found.

After a four-day trial during which he claimed he never believed the 15-year-old was real, Froese was convicted of Internet luring. The crime carries a mandatory minimum of one year in jail.

“Internet luring is a serious offence,” said Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance. While Froese’s ad was answered by a police officer, “it could well have been an underaged child.”

Froese, a married agricultural worker, posted his first ad Sept. 12, 2012 at 7:47 a.m. Within days, he posted two more detailing the type of acts that interested him.

He made arrangements to meet Alex at the mall, but he said what he really wanted was an encounter in the boy’s bedroom after school one day while the boy’s parents were still at work.

“He acknowledges his behaviour was grossly, grossly inappropriate,” defence lawyer Andrew Bradie told the court.

Court heard Froese was sexually abused as a child by an older brother. The abuse ended when his brother died in a car crash.

Bradie said his brother’s death left Froese both “devastated and relieved.”

Police found scads of pornography on his computer, but none of it depicted children. Froese denies being attracted to kids.

But he admitted being addicted to pornography, spending three to four hours a day looking at it.

During his probation, Froese is to take counselling.

Froese’s wife and other family members were in court for the sentencing. Before being led away to begin serving his sentence, Froese handed his wife his wedding ring.

Froese spent eight days in jail before being released on bail. He will get 12 days’ credit for that time, which will go toward his one-year sentence.

Froese was mistreated by guards and assaulted by fellow inmates, Bradie said. At the old Windsor jail, he was placed in solitary confinement in a cell with a smelly, broken toilet.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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A jilted husband found myriad ways to drive his ex-wife crazy.

He would drive by her house incessantly, revving his engine to make sure she would know he was there.

He crashed a Mommy and Daughter Tea at school and caused a scene at a block party.

On one of his access visits with his daughters over Christmas holidays, he taught his little girls a song. They returned to their mom singing, “You’re a home wrecker. I’ll teach you a lesson.”

Superior Court Justice Richard Gates called the man’s behaviour a “malicious campaign” of torment. Now Gates, who convicted the man of criminal harassment and stalking, has to decide a punishment.

The Crown asked Gates Wednesday to impose a jail sentence of three to four months.

“We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of incidents,” said assistant Crown attorney George Spartinos. “People split up… It causes people to misbehave, but not like this.”

The man’s name can’t be published under a publication ban that protects the identity of his ex-wife.

Defence lawyer Laura Joy asked for a suspended sentence, a conditional discharge or house arrest.

Joy argued the man is a talented musician and a beloved former school teacher. He volunteers on the board of a housing co-operative and has a degree from Queen’s University.

“There is no evidence before your honour that this gentleman is a danger to society.”

Spartinos disagreed.

“The message has to be sent to the offender and the rest of society that you just can’t do this.”

The woman complained to police more than seven years ago about being stalked by her ex-husband. When they heard her allegation that the man had once swatted her in the face with a newspaper and sexually assaulted her, they charged him with assault and sexual assault.

The charges were withdrawn in exchange for a peace bond in 2007 in which he agreed to stay away from her.

Despite the restraining order, the man’s stalking behaviour continued.

He would follow his ex-wife when she took their daughters to the park or the grocery store and confront them in public. He would drive by her work and the homes of her friends and family.

He would call the neighbour who lived across the street from his ex-wife to get the man to spy on her. The man stopped taking his calls.

He called the Children’s Aid Society on his ex-wife’s boyfriend and made a false report.

Police told the woman to document every instance of harassment. Finally, in 2009, the man was charged with criminal harassment and watching and besetting, commonly referred to as stalking.

He spent three days in jail before being released on bail. He was ordered to stay away from the woman and his daughters.

He hasn’t seen the girls, now aged 15 and 12, for more than 7 ½ years.

The man’s father began his own campaign against the woman. He erected a sign on the back of his pickup truck and parked it outside her church one Sunday. On it he urged parishioners to help his son get visitation rights back.

The man, who appeared in court Wednesday wearing a Hawaiian shirt and black jeans, used to teach for the Greater Essex County District School Board. He now lives off an Ontario disability pension, his lawyer said.

The judge is expected to render a decision on June 23.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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Former Windsor Spitfire Ben Johnson grabbed a woman’s hand in the washroom of a bar and forced her to touch his penis, his trial in Ontario court heard again Tuesday.

The woman said she was with friends at the Krooked Kilt, a Wyandotte Street West bar, on Jan. 13, 2013. The single toilet in the women’s washroom was occupied, so she and her friends used the vacant men’s washroom.

She said she was in the stall when a seemingly drunk Johnson barged in on her. He pulled his jeans down to his knees, exposing his penis.

“Move or I’ll pee on you,” he said to her.

He then tried a different tack — he told her to touch him. When she refused, Johnson took her hand and forced it onto his genitals, she said.

Johnson, who turns 21 Sunday, is on trial, charged with sexual assault. His trial resumed after an eight-month break in testimony, hearing again from the same witnesses who testified last year.

Ontario court Justice Micheline Rawlins ruled in February that the Crown can call witnesses to testify to other lewd acts Johnson allegedly committed at the bar that night.

Rawlins has imposed a publication ban on the identity of the woman who complained to police. Her complaint is the basis for the sexual assault charge.

The 22-year-old woman went to police in March 2013, two months after the alleged incident at the Krooked Kilt. She said she decided to tell her story after hearing that Johnson had allegedly assaulted another young woman.

• Read Sarah Sacheli’s live tweets from court

Johnson is facing a separate sexual assault charge in relation to an incident that allegedly occurred at Mynt, a defunct downtown bar.

Johnson’s new defence lawyer, Evan Weber, tried to paint the woman as opportunistic.

The former Spit was drafted by the New Jersey Devils last year, and has signed what Weber called a “lucrative” contract.

“Part of the reason we are here is you see Mr. Johnson as a payday for yourself,” Weber said.

The woman disagreed.

Weber showed the woman a copy of a letter Johnson received from a lawyer notifying him of her intent to sue in the civil courts.

The woman denied being aware of the document.

The judge shut down Weber’s questioning about the potential lawsuit after learning the letter had been drafted by lawyer Maria Marusic. Marusic is facing disciplinary charges in relation to her partnership with suspended lawyer Claudio Martini, who is accused of misappropriating clients’ money.

Marusic “may or may not be practising law at this point,” Rawlins said. “Given the source … I’m not going to allow this line of questioning.”

Weber also grilled the woman about her giving police the wrong date of the alleged incident. The woman testified she went to police on March 18, 2013 and told them Johnson had assaulted her on a Sunday night three weeks previously.

The woman, who is in a same-sex relationship with another woman who was with her in the washroom that night, said she developed a “gut feeling” that she had gotten the date wrong. She and her girlfriend used their cellphones to check social media postings from the night in question. Her girlfriend found a photo posted to Instagram. Consulting a calendar and her own sports team’s schedule, she discovered the alleged incident involving Johnson had occurred more than a month earlier than she had told police.

She called an officer back and corrected the date, she testified.

While she delayed going to police, she told her father about the incident the next day, she said.

The woman testified she swore at Johnson in the bathroom stall and kneed him in the crotch. As Johnson was doubled over from the blow, she pushed him out of her way so she could exit the stall.

Johnson was not speaking clearly, she said. “You could tell he was drinking.”

Johnson was signed by New Jersey last year, but has yet to play a game an NHL game. Last season, Johnson played 28 games for the Devils’ American Hockey League farm team in Albany, N.Y., and another 12 games in the East Coast League for the Orlando Solar Bears.

Johnson’s trial resumes Wednesday and is scheduled for six more days this week and next.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or twitter.com/winstarsacheli

A hung jury in Detroit said Wednesday it could not determine whether a Windsor woman was improperly touched on her breasts and groin area during a body search by customs officers at the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.

The two-day trial this week was declared a mistrial and has been tentatively rescheduled in U.S. federal court for July 13.

The jury was assigned to determine whether Leslie Ingratta, 36, was unreasonably violated while crossing into Detroit on Jan. 30, 2011 after being pulled over for secondary inspection by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Two female officers — Rosie Mackenzie and Tiffany Easley — were involved in the decision to conduct a “pat-down body search” of Ingratta, according to David Nacht, an Ann Arbor civil rights lawyer who represented the Windsor woman.

It was Officer Mackenzie who allegedly slid her hand inside the woman’s bra and touched her breasts as Easley watched, he said. Under regulations, customs officers during a pat-down are only allowed to conduct a body search over clothing.

Given the unending threat of terrorism, border guards on both the U.S. and Canadian sides have a “very tough job,” Nacht said.

“We believe in this case the culture of the agency and desire to catch bad guys was allowed to develop in this situation to where someone went too far in the search — infringing on liberty,” Nacht said.

“This case is quite important in highlighting that issue. It’s important for a jury to decide what are the limits.”

Nacht did not allow Ingratta to speak to The Star following the jury’s decision and a new trial looming.

Nacht said testimony during the short trial which started Monday and ended Tuesday around 2 p.m. pointed to Mackenzie being “upset with Ms. Ingratta’s attitude,” so that was why she “put her hands directly on the skin of her breasts.”

Both female officers testified they had no recollection of the alleged incident and search of Ingratta, he said.

But other officers — specifically the officer who handed back her car keys and directed her out of secondary inspection — testified he remembered how Ingratta “seemed upset” following the body search, Nacht said.

The jury was assigned to decide whether “the burden of proof is more likely than not” that Ingratta’s rights were violated under the U.S. Constitution.

“It gives a traveller rights under the fourth amendment and protection from unreasonable searches,” Nacht said.

“The jury must decide whether the search was unreasonable, then decide whether to award (financial) damages.”

Ingratta following the inspection was allowed entry by U.S. customs, but instead went home after the incident, distraught over the search, her lawyer said. She never missed any work in the days that followed.

Her lawyer had requested damages of between $50,000 and $100,000 “for the loss of dignity and humiliation,” plus punitive damages.

“Enough to send a message so other people are treated with respect at the border,” Nacht said.

Ingratta is employed in Windsor, working with developmentally disabled adults.

“She has never sued anybody before,” Nacht said. “She is a very reasonable person and now it’s scary for her to cross the border.

“She felt it was important to raise this issue not just for herself, but all travellers.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit handling the case did not return messages from The Star.

In a trial brief obtained by The Detroit News, the federal attorneys conceded there was a pat down of Ingratta, but that it was routine.

“The defendants deny that the pat down search was unnecessarily and improperly physically invasive,” officials wrote.

“Officer Mackenzie conducted the pat down of Ingratta in accordance with (United States Custom and Border Protection) policies and training.”

The government said Ingratta’s search matched standard protocol.

“Because Officer Mackenzie conducted the pat-down search of Ingratta in an appropriate manner, over her clothing, without groping or fondling her breasts or groin, the pat-down search was routine and did not violate Ingratta’s Fourth Amendment rights,” officials wrote.

dbattagello@windsorstar.com

twitter.com/davebattagello

A young woman trapped in a washroom stall with Ben Johnson two years ago was acting out of sorts when the door finally opened, the former Windsor Spitfires’ sexual assault trial heard Wednesday.

“She was tripping… like she was in shock,” the young woman’s girlfriend testified.

Johnson, who played for the Spitfires for two seasons before being drafted by the New Jersey Devils, is on trial in Windsor, charged with a single count of sexual assault. He is accused of barging into a washroom stall at the Krooked Kilt, a Wyandotte Street West bar, grabbing the hand of the young woman who was inside and forcing her to touch his exposed penis. The incident is alleged to have occurred on Jan. 13, 2013.

There is a mandatory ban prohibiting publication of information that would identify Johnson’s accuser.

• Read Star Reporter Sarah Sacheli’s tweets from court
  • Sexual assault trial of former Spitfires player Ben Johnson starts again
  • Woman’s testimony stands in sexual assault trial of former Spitfires player
  • Johnson ‘a good guy,’ former teammate testifies at sex assault trial
  • Former Spits’ player punched in face by alleged victim’s angry brother, court hears

Johnson’s alleged victim testified first when his trial resumed this week. Wednesday afternoon, that woman’s girlfriend took the witness stand.

The girlfriend, 21, testified she and the alleged victim went into a washroom stall together.

“I flushed and walked out… I thought she was following me.”

But before her girlfriend left the stall, a man she later learned was Johnson, got in. The stall door closed and she could hear her girlfriend swearing.

The woman testified another friend entered the washroom and together they tried to open the stall door, to no avail. The incident lasted 30 to 40 seconds.

“He whipped it out,” the girlfriend recalls the alleged victim telling her after the stall door opened.

Several young men she knew to be members of the Spitfires were in the bar that night, she testified. She named several players and said others included “a Russian guy and a guy with a chipped tooth.”

She didn’t know Johnson, so she and the alleged victim went through the bar asking who he was.

The alleged victim’s brother was also in the bar. The brother and Johnson got into a physical altercation after the brother learned of what took place in the washroom, she said.

The witness and the alleged victim were in what she described as a “complicated” romantic relationship. They are still a couple.

The trial continues in Ontario court.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Twitter.com/WinStarSacheli

At the Krooked Kilt the night of Jan. 13, 2013, Mike Flores was a jack-of-all-trades.

Flores was tending bar at the Wyandotte Street West watering hole. Hired originally as a cook, he was also running back and forth from the kitchen filling food orders.

Then, learning Windsor Spitfires were among the crowd, he was playing detective, calling up the team roster on his cellphone to bounce the underaged players out of the bar.

Flores testified Thursday in the Ontario court trial of former Spitfire Ben Johnson. Johnson, who turns 21 Sunday, is charged with sexual assault for an incident alleged to have occurred in the washroom of the bar.

A woman socializing with a group of friends that night says Johnson accosted her in a washroom stall, exposing his genitals and forcing her hand onto his penis.

Flores testified Thursday he recalls there being a “commotion” in the bar around midnight. He said bar patrons had gone outside and there was a fight in front of the bank across the street. “By the time I got to the front door, it was already done and over with.”

• Read Star reporter Sarah Sacheli’s court tweets

Flores testified last year when Johnson’s trial began. Evan Weber, Johnson’s lawyer, consented to a transcript of Flores’s earlier testimony being entered as evidence.

In it, Flores said the Spits were less than ideal patrons. “There were some members of the Windsor Spitfires in the bar and causing trouble,” he said. One, John Bowen, took a couple swings at Flores as Flores was escorting him out.

“One of the girls… asked why, why do I even let the Spitfires in the bar.”

Flores worked at the bar until June 2013. The Spitfires never came back while he worked there.

Johnson was underaged at the time. When asked if he recognized Johnson, Flores said he did not.

Court has heard the woman who filed the complaint against Johnson is suing him.

Johnson, who hails from Calumet, Mich., signed a three-year contract with the New Jersey Devils in 2013. Last season, he played 28 games for the Devils’ American Hockey League farm team in Albany, N.Y., and another 12 in the East Coast League for the Orlando Solar Bears.

He has not played in the NHL.

The trial continues.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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• Woman’s testimony stands in sexual assault trial of former Spitfires player
• Johnson ‘a good guy,’ former teammate testifies at sex assault trial
• Spitfire accused of sexual assault will not challenge having to stand trial
• Former Spits’ player punched in face by alleged victim’s angry brother, court hears

A Windsor man and convicted voyeur is heading to jail after being caught secretly filming his neighbour as she visited his bathroom.

The defence tried to argue that the hidden camera installed by Thomas Chauvin, 57, was simply to record which strangers might be in his home.

Even after his client confessed to the criminal charge of voyeurism, lawyer Michael O’Hearn said Chauvin was simply guilty of “an error in judgment.” Had the camera been located anywhere other than in the bathroom, where he conceded there is “a reasonable expectation of privacy,” than no crime would have been committed, he said.

But the judge would have none of that. At Chauvin’s sentencing hearing Friday, Ontario court Justice Micheline Rawlins pointed out that the object of the filming was to capture glimpses of vagina, penis and breasts.

“That is a total violation, not an error in judgment … let’s not mince words here,” said Justice Micheline Rawlins.

It was a year ago in May when the neighbour’s son, using Chauvin’s bathroom, said he accidentally knocked over a laundry hamper, revealing a hidden camera and recording device. Outside court, he told The Star that tapes seized following an angry confrontation revealed edited scenes of his mother’s exposed private parts in bathroom visits over the previous three years.

“I’m still in shock … (that) someone I trusted as a brother, and who was close to me, could do this,” the woman said in a tearful victim impact statement she read out in court. The woman, who is taking medication and counselling with a psychologist, said that over the past year, “I feel like I’m living a nightmare that never ends.”

A judge-imposed publication ban prevents the names of the victim or her family from being reported.

The victim said she and Chauvin were very close, having lived next door to each other the past 24 years and each having keys to the other’s home, to take care of things, borrow tools or visit.

When she was shown some of the videotape, “I was disgusted, I collapsed on the ground,” she told The Star.

The victim said that ever since, she’s been too afraid to be alone at home or to venture into her yard, and the blinds are drawn on that side of her home facing the perpetrator’s address, just six feet away.

“I’m an emotional wreck,” she said. “I’m always nervous he’s watching … I’m physically ill when I hear his voice,” she read from the victim impact statement.

Assistant Crown attorney Scott Kerwin called it an “egregious violation of privacy.” He said the 29 images of the victim that were edited and put together by the perpetrator for his sexual enjoyment depicted the “genital and anal regions” of the victim and included her face as well.

While commending Chauvin for pleading guilty prior to a trial “that can be humiliating, that can be devastating for the victim,” Rawlins said that by depicting the victim’s face, a jail sentence was a must.

“No face — no jail,” she said.

The defence had argued for a suspended sentence and period of probation. Kerwin said the case called for a “denunciatory” penalty, arguing for a four-month jail term followed by “a lengthy period of probation.”

The actual sentencing has been pushed back to next week. Rawlins gave Chauvin that time to decide whether he’d prefer a 30-day sentence served in Windsor or a 20-day intermittent sentence to be served on weekends in a London jail. O’Hearn said his client had heard stories that intermittents are beaten by other inmates if they don’t smuggle drugs and other contraband in on their weekends.

Rawlins said the courts did not have the power to order the guilty party out of his house but that, given the relationship now between the former close neighbours, “Somebody’s going to have to move.”

Outside the courthouse later, the victim described either of the judge’s suggested punishment scenarios as “a slap on the wrist.”

But she said it was better than allowing Chauvin to simply walk away. Sadly, it’s the victim who is being forced out of her neighbourhood and the home of 29 years where she raised her children.

“Now I can sell my house and move on — it sucks, but it’s over,” she said.

dschmidt@windsorstar.com

twitter.com/schmidtcity

Former Windsor Spitfire Ben Johnson accosted a second woman in the same washroom of the same bar the night of Jan. 13, 2013, his sexual assault trial heard Friday.

A woman testified that she ducked into a stall in the men’s washroom at the Krooked Kilt after finding the two, single-toilet women’s washrooms occupied. A man with his back to her was using the urinal, so she announced her presence. “Hey, I’m just using the stall,” she testified she told the man.

She was on the toilet when there was a knock on the stall door. Thinking it was her friend — women usually go to the washroom in pairs, she testified — she opened the door a crack.

It was Johnson, the fly on his jeans undone, asking for oral sex.

Johnson, who turns 21 Sunday, is on trial in Ontario court, charged with a single count of sexual assault. Another woman claims a drunken Johnson barged in on her when she was in a washroom stall, grabbed her hand and forced her to touch his exposed penis.

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• Sexual assault trial of former Spitfires player Ben Johnson starts again

There are no charges related to the woman who says Johnson approached her in the same washroom. Her evidence can be used to argue Johnson’s pattern of behaviour in the bar that night, the judge has ruled.

Ontario court Justice Micheline Rawlins has imposed a publication ban on the identity of Johnson’s accuser. That ban extends beyond the young woman’s name and includes details heard at trial that might identify her.

The young woman who testified Friday said she was among a group of young women who often attended the Krooked Kilt  on Sunday nights. She had class the next morning, so she had only one or two drinks before leaving the bar earlier than the rest of the group.

She arrived between 9 and 10 p.m. and needed to use the washroom about an hour later. She assumed a friend was tagging along behind her as she made her way into the men’s washroom, but she thought nothing of it when she found herself alone in there with a man using a urinal.

She said the door on the washroom stall was so wide that she had to move her legs out of the way to even partially open it while sitting on the toilet.

When she heard the knock, she unlocked the door thinking it was her friend catching up to her. Instead it was the same young man she had seen using the urinal.

“I thought that meant you would give me a blow job,” he said as she peeked around the door. She said, “No,” with a chuckle and shut the door again.

When she emerged from the stall, Johnson was still standing there, his fly still open.

“Are you going to give me a blow job?” he asked.

“No,” she said again, incredulously. “I said, ‘I’m really gay.’”

Johnson responded: “Aren’t we all.”

The young woman said Johnson made no attempt to touch her, so she didn’t feel threatened. She made her way to the sink to wash her hands.

Johnson then made a different request, she said. “Will you at least lift up your shirt?”

Young men she believes were fellow Spitfire players then approached Johnson. “Ben, let her go,” they said.

“I’m in such shock,” the young woman testified. “The situation was so bizarre to me.”

The young woman said she believed Johnson was more sober than drunk, but there was no question he had been drinking. His speech wasn’t “sharp,” she said. Besides, “Any reasonable, sober person wouldn’t ask that.”

Johnson is charged with a second sexual assault that allegedly occurred at Mynt nightclub two months later on St. Patrick’s Day. Johnson’s accuser in the Krooked Kilt case went to police after learning of the Mynt incident, court has heard.

The young woman on the witness stand Friday said the alleged victim in the Krooked Kilt case told her Johnson had assaulted her on the dance floor of the bar, not the washroom.

The woman returns to the witness stand when the trial resumes June 10.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Twitter.com/WinStarSacheli

A Windsor man has pleaded guilty after he chased his pregnant common-law wife in a pick-up truck, smashing the vehicle into a front porch of a home in the 1600 block of Hickory Road.

Sonny St. Martin pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon and exceeding the legal limit in connection with the July 2013 attack.

Officers responded just after midnight to 1675 Hickory Rd. after the truck slammed into a house and ripped off part of the front porch. The truck, a Ford F-150, also caught on fire.

Startled residents awakened by the impact put out the fire, which started in the engine area. The man who was driving the truck was pinned by the legs inside the truck.

It took paramedics and firefighters about half an hour to get him out. The man was treated at hospital for some minor abrasions.

The Windsor police major crimes unit said that moments before the impact, a young couple had been arguing inside the F-150. The man assaulted his partner, leaving her with some facial injuries, said police.

The woman, in her 20s, escaped into the street. Police said the man then tried to run her over as she fled. She managed to jump out of the way, taking shelter behind a tree, and the truck crashed into a house.

In his last drunken rage, Sonny St. Martin beat up his pregnant girlfriend and tried to run her over with a pickup truck.

She still wants to marry him and bear more of his children.

St. Martin, 30, pleaded guilty Monday in Superior Court to the July 7, 2013 attack on Jessica Rushlow. He also pleaded guilty to driving with more than three times the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream and, in an unrelated crime after his arrest, assaulting another inmate for not smuggling contraband into the jail for him.

Neighbours in the 1600 block of Hickory Road heard a man and woman arguing in the street around midnight. Then they saw the woman running down the street, a Ford F-150 pickup truck driving down the wrong side of the road in chase. Witnesses told police the truck was travelling at “expressway speed” when the woman hid behind a tree. The truck, meanwhile, jumped the curb and smashed into the front porch of a house.

Rushlow told police St. Martin had consumed 14 beers and a bottle of gin before they were headed to a home on Hickory Road. Rushlow was driving when St. Martin became violent. He was kicking the dashboard trying to activate the airbag and punched a mirror, cutting his hand. He then punched Rushlow in the face.

She pulled over and ran a block down the street. Rushlow jumped into the driver’s seat and gave chase.

When police interviewed Rushlow, she said St. Martin was trying to run her down. He was charged with attempted murder. At the time, Rushlow was sporting old bruises she told police were from when St. Martin assaulted her two weeks earlier at his mother’s home. She further told police St. Martin did not have her permission to drive her truck and had him charged with theft of a motor vehicle.

Then, at St. Martin’s preliminary hearing last December, Rushlow recanted.

Court also heard Monday that St. Martin had broken Rushlow’s jaw in December 2012. Police attended a residence in Wallaceburg and found her lying on the ground in the fetal position with blood pouring from her mouth.

She refused to give police a statement. St. Martin was acquitted of assault causing bodily harm.

Court heard St. Martin has a long, violent history of domestic abuse of other partners. He has been convicted nine times of assault and 14 times for uttering threats.

The Crown and defence agree that St. Martin should be made to spend another year behind bars in addition to the 23 months he has already served awaiting trial. The Crown is seeking an additional three years of probation after his release.

The Crown’s position is that whatever sentence the judge imposes, it should include a condition that St. Martin not communicate with Rushlow.

Rushlow took the witness stand Monday asking the judge not to impose that condition.

“He’s a kind-hearted person. I don’t see him the way everyone else sees him,” Rushlow, 30, told the court. “I have full intention of continuing the relationship, including getting married and extending our family.”

Rushlow told the court she has a college diploma but doesn’t work. She was in a car accident where she suffered a “catastrophic brain injury,” she said. Her lawyer sends her money while her lawsuit makes it way through the courts.

Rushlow said she gave birth to St. Martin’s baby — a girl — in January 2014. St. Martin has yet to see his daughter. Rushlow has two other children who live with their respective fathers and visit her every other weekend.

Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance said Rushlow “seems determined” to continue her relationship with St. Martin. Court heard that after the Wallaceburg incident, St. Martin was ordered not to communicate with Rushlow. He breached that court order. Rushlow, too, was charged, with facilitating the breach, for sending letters and pictures to St. Martin.

She was convicted and spent two weeks in jail.

Defence lawyer Ken Marley said Rushlow is a grown woman and the court should not decide whether she should associate with St. Martin.

Assistant Crown attorney Elizabeth Brown disagrees.

“I know she is 30 years old, but age doesn’t matter in situations of domestic violence… She is not capable of protecting herself.”

Pomerance said she, too, “harbours some very real concerns” about Rushlow’s safety and that of her children.

“I am very troubled by the criminal record and Mr. St. Martin’s history of violence.”

St. Martin says he is violent only when he is drunk. The judge disagreed, pointing to the October 2013 attack on the fellow inmate. St. Martin punched the man, kicking him in the face when he was on the ground.

The man had been scheduled to be released from jail the next day. He lost all his teeth and was out of work for two months.

The Crown also asked the judge to order St. Martin to repay two insurance companies for the written-off pickup truck and nearly $31,000 in damages to the house he hit. He will also have to pay $600 in mandatory fines that go into a fund to help victims of crime. The judge says she has to research how much time she can give St. Martin to pay.

His case returns to court Wednesday.

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With Law Society of Upper Canada charges looming, Windsor lawyer Todd Branch said he’s hanging up his legal gown and pursuing other interests, like professional scuba diving.

“The law society and I are going to part ways — it’s been in the works for a while,” Branch told The Star Monday. “I’m happy to not be practising law.”

Ontario’s Law Society Tribunal has announced a July 10 hearing at Toronto’s Osgoode Hall to deal with two professional misconduct complaints levied against Branch. He’s accused of “failing to produce a prompt and complete response” to the Law Society’s requests for information and documents made between November and March related to a Client A and on April 8 in relation to a Client B.

An LSUC spokeswoman said Monday that no further details are available at this time.

Branch said he was only aware of the November issue and that it relates to non-compliance of “administrative” matters. He said he has “yet to decide” how he’ll respond to the allegations or to the hearing in July.

But his lawyering days are over, he said, adding he hasn’t practised “in several months.” Called to the bar in Michigan in 2003 and in Ontario in 2007, Branch said he never liked the “combative” nature of practising corporate and commercial law.

“There are other, more positive and pro-active opportunities I’d like to pursue,” he said. Those include consulting work, and he also wants to continue with his other professional career, as a master scuba diving instructor.

And there will “absolutely not” be any more politics in his future, said the Windsor West Progressive Conservative candidate who came third in the 2011 provincial election.

Failure to attend the July 10 proceedings, Branch has been warned, could mean they will be conducted in his absence.

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Former Windsor Spitfires player Ben Johnson was sporting a shiner on Jan. 14, 2013, and he wanted to know why.

So he reached out over Facebook to the man who had punched him the night before at the Krooked Kilt, a bar on Wyandotte Street West.

“Hey man I’m wondering why you punched me in the face last night,” he wrote. Seven minutes later, Johnson sent another message: “What was your reason for that?”

Later in the exchange, Johnson admitted only to going to the bathroom in front of the man’s sister.

Johnson, 21, is on trial charged with sexually assaulting a young woman in the men’s washroom. It was common, the trial has heard, for women to use a stall in the men’s room when the two women’s toilets were occupied. A young woman said she was inside the stall when Johnson barged in, grabbed her hand and forced her to touch his exposed penis.

A publication ban prohibits identifying the woman.

• Read Star reporter Sarah Sacheli’s tweets from court

A second woman has testified Johnson accosted her in the washroom the same night asking for oral sex. There are no criminal charges against Johnson related to that alleged incident.

The young man on the witness stand Wednesday said he was in the bar when his sister came to him crying. “I pretty much got raped,” she told him at first. He “snapped” and flew into a rage. He asked his sister to point out the man who had assaulted her. She identified Johnson.

The young woman’s brother testified Johnson had been kicked out of the bar and was standing outside. He went outside and shoved Johnson, but was pulled away by a friend before the altercation got more physical.

The brother went back inside and soon saw Johnson at the back of the bar making his way to the men’s washroom. The brother followed. He knocked Johnson to the ground with a single punch to the eye, he said.

The next day, he had a Facebook message from Johnson. According to a printout entered as a court exhibit, there was an exchange that stretched over three days between accounts bearing the names of the two men.

The exchange begins with Johnson asking what he did to deserve getting punched.

The brother responded: “U no what you did. Stop talking to me. Ur Lucky I just hit u once.”

Johnson wrote back: “No I don’t I never did anything wrong.”

The following day, Johnson sent a message apologizing and saying, “I deserved it hope there’s no hard feelings.”

The brother responds a day after that with a softer message. “I respect u owning up to it. I can tell ur a good guy dude.”

Later, the brother gives Johnson a friendly warning about his father going to Spitfires general manager Warren Rychel after having learned about the incident in the bar.

“Really? Ok man well that puts me in a tough situation thanks for the heads up,” Johnson responds.

The brother tells Johnson everyone makes mistakes, then goes on to praise his hockey prowess. “Didnt u get drafted,” he says, referencing Johnson being signed by the New Jersey Devils. “U should really be careful with stuff like that man. Last thing u want is a career ending assault and sexual abuse charges.”

Johnson immediately responds denying he assaulted or abused anyone. “I know that I screwed up by going to the bathroom in front of her but I would never do any of that.”

The brother testified he gave his father access to his Facebook account so he could print off the messages and hand them over to police. He couldn’t do it himself because he was in Brentwood at the time being treated for a seven-gram-a-day cocaine addiction.

He returns to the witness stand Thursday.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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• Spitfire accused of sexual assault will not challenge having to stand trial
• Johnson ‘a good guy,’ former teammate testifies at sex assault trial
• Woman’s testimony stands in sexual assault trial of former Spitfires player
• She was tripping:’ woman trapped in washroom stall with former Spits player Ben Johnson

She still loves the guy, despite being beaten, bloodied and hunted down by him.

Now she’s begging the courts not to put up barriers between her and the man with whom she wants to build a future and a family.

“It is a complex dynamic,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance agreed at a sentencing hearing Wednesday. Her final decision was put over for a week: “This is an issue that requires some careful attention.”

The last time they were together as a couple, Sonny St. Martin was behind the wheel of a Ford F-150, barreling at high speed and the wrong way down a Windsor road towards a terrified Jessica Rushlow.

Yellow police tape and a police cruiser cordon off a section of the street in front of a house on the 1600 block of Hickory Rd., where a pickup truck crashed into the front porch in the early morning, Sunday, July 7, 2013. The driver of the vehicle was allegedly trying to hit his common-law wife with the truck and is being charged with attempted murder. (DAX MELMER/The Windsor Star)

Rushlow, pregnant with St. Martin’s child at the time, had fled the pickup after her drunken and enraged boyfriend punched her in the face. He missed her behind a tree, and slammed the vehicle into an adjacent house.

Half a year before that July 7, 2013, attack, St. Martin, who has a history of domestic abuse and a criminal record with nine assault convictions, broke Rushlow’s jaw. Found curled up on the ground and bleeding, she refused to give responding police officers a statement, and she recanted her statement to police during St. Martin’s attempted-murder preliminary hearing last December.

After 23 months in custody, St. Martin this week pleaded guilty to assault in the July 7 attack. The Crown and defence are both recommending an additional year behind bars, while the prosecution is seeking an additional three years of probation after his release, accompanied with a non-association order to protect the victim.

But the victim, who describes her repeat attacker as a “kind-hearted” person, perhaps misunderstood, wants none of that.

Defence lawyer Ken Marley said the court should respect Rushlow’s wishes and “not take away her autonomy” on the matter. Rushlow, being college-educated and 30 years old, is “going to have a little more common sense about these issues,” he added.

Assistant Crown attorney Elizabeth Brown argued that, given past police involvement and St. Martin’s long history of violence, the court must impose such a restriction to protect Rushlow.

“The judge is right … this is one of those complex situations,” said Thom Rolfe, executive director of Hiatus House, Windsor’s sanctuary for victims of domestic violence. “She’s an adult and has the right to determine who she lives with … and, yet, she’s in a dangerous situation from the sound of it.”

When it comes to instances of domestic violence, whether or not one is college-educated has little to do with it, said Rolfe, and common sense isn’t always a factor when it comes to emotional attachment.

While cautioning she doesn’t know a lot of the details, Betty Barrett, an associate professor in the University of Windsor’s school of social work, said she sees “a lot of red flags” in this case.

The justice system must weigh the need for the victim’s safety and protection with that person’s right to make her own decisions, said Barrett, who researches intimate partner violence.

She said her research has shown that more than 90 per cent of the victims of domestic abuse who call police are seeking “immediate protection.” They want the violence to be stopped, but many of them don’t want such outside intervention to result in the end of their relationship with the perpetrator.

A woman who doesn’t want to leave an abusive partner today might have a change of mind later, said Barrett. She said research shows it can take five to seven attempts on average before a victim extricates herself from an abusive relationship.

Marley said his client would like to continue the relationship, and wants the court to “see her (Rushlow) respected” by not imposing any association restrictions. Marley said the judge could make an order that puts Rushlow in control of the relationship by giving her the power of “no contact without her express consent.”

Rolfe said Hiatus House offers programs that include “safety planning,” which gives those seeking help who subsequently return to their partners the tools to “recognize when the situation is escalating again,” and how to then respond.

There’s no judging of the victim — “we keep the door open for them here,” he said.

Hiatus House sees about 4,000 people a year, said Rolfe, and the 42-bed shelter had a 94 per cent occupancy rate in 2014, he said.

dschmidt@windsorstar.com

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