TORONTO -- A Toronto police officer has been sentenced to five months in jail after being found guilty of sexually assaulting two women in his cruiser in 2015.
Both woman testified that they were offered a ride home by Sgt. Christopher Heard on separate occasions late at night and that he had grabbed their inner thighs while they were in his car.
One woman, identified as S.F., said that she had drinks with a friend on Sept. 23, 2015 and was walking home around 12:50 a.m. with her bicycle when she heard a police car pull up. Heard, she said, offered her a ride home.
The court heard that the officer told S.F. she was beautiful and then grabbed her upper inner thigh twice—the second time was after she had told him to “get off me.”
The woman was dropped off at home around 1:08 a.m. and filed a complaint with police the following day.
The other woman, identified as M.N., said that Heard approached her as she was leaving a downtown bar around 2 a.m. on Nov. 1 of the same year and offered her a ride home.
“He is a cop. So, I trusted him,” she told the courtroom.
M.N. told the court that Heard touched her “on her left inner thigh, close to her pelvic bone.” She pushed him away and got out of the car. She reported the incident the following day after reading a news article about the other woman’s complaint.
Heard denied the accusations and said the women were motivated by grudges against police officers.
The 32-year-old veteran of the force was found guilty of the offences in September.
With files from Canadian Press
