A former RCMP officer convicted of secretly recording women in Ottawa bathrooms, bedrooms and hotel rooms for years, in addition to exposing himself to schoolgirls in Vancouver, is no longer going to trial on charges of sexual assault and harassment in Ottawa.
But his third trial looms in Vancouver this fall, where Andrew Seangio, 39, is accused of impersonating someone, assaulting a woman and having a forged RCMP identification card — all while he was on bail awaiting an appeal of the Vancouver indecent act and exposure convictions that was later dismissed.
Seangio is still waiting to hear whether a separate appeal of his second set of convictions — more than 30 acts of voyeurism in Ottawa over four years — will go ahead or not.
At the Ottawa courthouse last month, Seangio signed a peace bond involving a woman he had been accused of sexually assaulting and harassing in Ottawa dating back decades.
A civilian Ottawa police member swore they have reasonable grounds to fear that Seangio will cause the woman “personal injury” because of “inappropriate actions” from 2005 through 2006, and again in 2017, according to courthouse records.
Outstanding Ottawa charges withdrawn, stayed
Seangio signed the $1,000 bond on May 14. He is ordered to keep the peace and behave well for a year, and not to communicate with the woman or her family in any way. She cannot be identified due to a publication ban.
The criminal charges involving the woman — sexual assault, harassment by threatening conduct and harassment by repeated communication — were then withdrawn.
Three other charges of sexual assault involving a different woman were stayed at the request of the Crown, also on May 14. Those alleged offences dated back to 2017 and 2018 in Ottawa. She also can’t be named due to a publication ban.
The former officer had been set to stand trial on all the outstanding Ottawa charges this coming November.
Avoided imprisonment for nearly a year
Seangio was first convicted in 2022 of exposing himself to girls in school uniforms as they walked home from private schools in Vancouver, as well as to undercover officers posing as girls as police worked to identify the culprit.
“On each occasion, he drove up in his SUV and exposed his penis and, at times, masturbated in front of the girls,” Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Bradley Miller summarized in 2023.
Seangio was a Mountie posted to the Richmond, B.C., detachment at the time of the crimes in 2018 and 2019, but committed them when he was off duty, RCMP said.
After the charges were laid in March 2020 Seangio was suspended with pay, CBC reported at the time.
He was suspended without pay nearly a year later, in January 2021, and Seangio was finally discharged from the force in September 2023, RCMP said.
For the Vancouver crimes he was sentenced to 18 months in jail, and he quickly appealed the convictions.
He served six days in jail before he was granted bail on Nov. 10, 2022, pending an appeal hearing, according to the Correctional Service of Canada.
This April, the appeal was dismissed.
Seangio is currently in prison, under the jurisdiction of the correctional service.
His two sentences add up to three and a half years. So far he has served about 270 days, according to information provided by a correctional service spokesperson in an email.
Secret videos indexed by body parts ‘horrified’ victims
In July last year, after a lengthy trial in Ottawa while Seangio was on bail pending the appeal of the Vancouver crimes, he was found guilty by Ontario Court Justice Norman Boxall of 33 charges of secretly recording women in the capital from 2014 to 2018 in bathrooms, bedrooms and hotel rooms.
The crimes only came to light after police in B.C., who were investigating his indecent acts and exposures in Vancouver, executed a search warrant at Seangio’s home.
He has a lengthy history of premeditated acts of domination of women and girls for the purposes of his sexual gratification.– Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Bradley Miller
The Ottawa victims had been recorded without their knowledge or consent — mostly while they were showering or using the toilet — “and they were shocked and horrified by the revelation,” Justice Miller wrote in 2023.
He stored his videos of the women on USB drives “indexed according to body parts,” “treasured” them in a safe and watched them regularly, Miller added, recounting the evidence heard by the trial judge.
Seangio was sentenced to two years in prison on Sept. 29, and was returned to custody that same day.
His lawyers Nikolas Lust and Yoav Niv filed an appeal of the conviction that same month.
Bail denied this time
Unlike B.C.’s appellate court, the Court of Appeal for Ontario denied Seangio bail while he waits for a hearing and decision.
Miller wrote that Seangio “does not appear to have taken any responsibility or demonstrated any appreciation of the gravity of his conduct or its impact on other people,” and that releasing him would undermine confidence in the justice system.
“His various patterns of offending each involve a significant degree of planning and commitment, carried out repeatedly over months and years,” Miller wrote.
“He has a lengthy history of premeditated acts of domination of women and girls for the purposes of his sexual gratification.”
Miller also wrote that the grounds for the appeal before him — to reargue the constitutionality of the search and seizure of the USB drives that contained the videos — “do not appear strong.”
By phone Monday, Lust said there are multiple grounds for the appeal, but that the situation is fluid and he couldn’t be more specific.
More charges in Vancouver set for trial
Another factor in denying Seangio bail was his arrest in B.C. on allegations that he impersonated someone, assaulted a woman and was in possession of forged RCMP identification, Miller wrote.
The incidents allegedly happened in 2022, while he was on bail awaiting sentencing for the indecent acts and exposures in Vancouver.
“Among other incidents, he is alleged to have yelled, ‘Police, stop her!’ after being passed on a trail by a woman cyclist. Complying with the direction, a bystander pushed the cyclist off her bicycle, fracturing her arm,” Miller wrote.
While the rest of Seangio’s conduct on bail was “exemplary,” Miller wrote, the allegations “provide ample reason to believe that [he] has carried on in a very antisocial manner while on bail, with his primary surety … either being unaware of his misconduct or unable to manage it.”
At the time of Miller’s decision to deny Seangio bail for his latest appeal, charges for the 2022 allegations had not yet been laid. They came a few weeks later, on Oct. 20, 2023.
For now, Seangio faces an eight-day trial on those charges before a judge in B.C.’s Provincial Court in September.
His lawyer in B.C., Glen Orris, was unavailable to respond to a request for comment this week, his firm said in an email.