City being sued over intimate images

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This article was published 27/02/2020 (2077 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A woman accused of leaking intimate photos of a Brandon Police Service candidate to senior members of the force during a hiring competition has now filed a claim against the City of Brandon, alleging BPS is “jointly and severely liable” for their involvement in the distribution of images.

Manitoba Justice Sandra Zinchuk granted a motion last month allowing Terry Lynn Peters — the defendant in a lawsuit filed in Brandon Court of Queen’s Bench by plaintiff Brittany Roque in 2018 — to file a third-party claim against the city.

The lawsuit alleges that Peters distributed intimate images of Roque without her consent as an act of revenge after discovering the photos on her then-partner’s computer.

None of the allegations has been proven in court.

According to initial court documents, Roque said she took and sent intimate photos to Ryan Friesen, a BPS officer, during a three-month affair with him in 2015, under the pretense he would not share the photos and would destroy them if the relationship ended.

Peters, a former civilian employee with the BPS, allegedly found the photos and distributed them to senior members of BPS approximately a year later while Roque was in the middle of a hiring competition to become a police officer in Brandon at the time.

Roque is now a police officer in Rivers.

Peters initially denied distributing the intimate images, but said that if any distribution occurred, “it was for the public good and in the public interest,” according to her statement of defence.

In the most recent third-party claim filed against Friesen and the City of Brandon earlier this month, Peters stated she discovered “approximately 100 images of women in various states of undress and intimacy” in Friesen’s email, approximately a dozen of which were of Roque.

Having previously worked for BPS and knowing that Roque was a candidate for employment with the force, Peters “was aware of a general call to members of the force and the public to provide any information about the character or background of a candidate that might be relevant,” the claim said, so Peters contacted Chief Wayne Balcaen and told him she had information concerning Roque that might be relevant to the hiring process.

Deputy Chief Randy Lewis was delegated to follow up, and he and Peters spoke over the phone about the intimate images. 

Lewis arranged to visit Peters’ home and retrieved the images, the claim said, bringing with him his own thumb drive to copy the images onto. 

“At all material times BPS was carrying out a background investigation to determine the fitness of Roque to be an officer in accordance with its duties as a police force,” the claim said. “At all material times, Peters acted in the capacity of a quasi-informant, providing information to BPS and then, upon their request and insistence, providing documents in support of that information.”

Peters claimed that Lewis did not warn her that the provision of the intimate images could or would be in contravention of the Criminal Code of Canada or the Intimate Images Protection Act.

Peters said BPS owed her a duty of care not to encourage unlawful activity and that BPS breached that duty by requesting she release the images to them.

“The Roque images were provided to BPS in reliance upon BPS having the lawful right to ask for and receive the photographs and that Peters relied on the authority of BPS to her detriment,” the claim said.

In 2018, Peters also filed a third-party claim against Friesen as well as Devon LeBlanc, stating she had reason to believe the images were not private and claiming that both Friesen and LeBlanc possessed the intimate images of Roque, as well.

The third-party claim against LeBlanc has since been discontinued.

In a statement of defence, Friesen said Peters hacked into his email account using her personal computer and took the images of Roque — which he believed had been deleted — without his consent.

Friesen has also filed a motion requesting the third-party claim against him be dismissed on the grounds that, to his knowledge, the intimate images of Roque were deleted and that Peters went into his email without his consent and forwarded the images she found in the trash folder to herself.

Zinchuk has yet to deliver a decision on that request.

Balcaen told The Brandon Sun on Wednesday he was not prepared to make any comments on the lawsuit at this time.

“I don’t believe it would be appropriate for me to comment at a time while this is before the courts,” Balcaen said.

A trial for this matter has been set for February 2021.

» edebooy@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @erindebooy