In all, Kelly, now 37, was charged with 17 counts of intimate partner violence, including assault, sexual assault, choking and threatening death, involving four former girlfriends and he was slated to go on trial this past July..Yet, the four women were left abandoned by a system that seems to only pay lip service to the scourge of domestic violence.
Instead, Thomas had to stay all the charges because they’d taken 25 months of inexplicable delay to get to trial, well over the 18-month deadline imposed by the Supreme Court in the famous Jordan decision. The judge laid most of the blame at the feet of the Crown after they couldn’t locate a complainant’s statement and then took months to have it redacted before finally turning it over to the defence.“I would have made the same decision,” she admits.
Celeste believes the police and prosecutors dropped the ball at every turn. During an angry meeting with the Crown, she says they admitted their handling of the case was a “debacle.”“Mr. Kelly, like every Canadian, has the right to be tried within a reasonable time pursuant to Sec. 11b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” wrote Luba Szkambara in an email. “Charges were stayed in this matter as the court found his Charter protected right was infringed.
It was her police statement that went missing after she’d spent two hours pouring out her pain to the OPP in June 2020. “How does that happen?” she demands.Still pending are sexual assault, forcible confinement and choking charges laid in Quebec against Kelly in 2022 in relation to an alleged attack she says occurred while they were in Montreal for a music festival.Last month, Kelly pleaded guilty to four charges of intimate partner violence related to a fifth girlfriend.
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