Trial begins for lawyer accused of sexually assaulting youth, former client
Warning: The content in this story involves alleged sexual assault and the details may be disturbing to some.
The sexual assault trial for a Newfoundland and Labrador lawyer who went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada in an attempt to conceal his identity began in St. John's Monday, with testimony from the complainant in the case.
Robert Regular, 72, is facing four counts of sexual assault and one of sexual interference, involving the same complainant. She was 12 at the time of the first alleged assault two decades ago. There is a publication ban on her identity.
The woman, who is now in her mid-30s, said she first met Regular while she was in junior high and in the care of what was then called Child, Youth and Family Services.
She testified in front of the judge-alone trial that her mother had picked her up from school to meet her lawyer, who she was told was working to get her back into her mother's care. She estimated she was between the ages of 12 and 14.
While parked outside his law office, her mother left the vehicle and allowed Regular to get in the driver's side.
"He was just rubbing my stomach and legs," the woman testified, pausing to grab a box of tissues.
"He was just leaning over, like I could feel his breath coming at me."
She said her mother came back to the car several minutes later and the mother and daughter drove away.
"I didn't say anything. I was really upset," she told the court.
Robert Regular, left, sits with his defence counsel, Rosellen Sullivan and Jerome Kennedy, during a brief recess at Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court in St. John's Monday morning. (Ariana Kelland/CBC)
Years later, while 17 and pregnant with a much-older man's child, the woman said she was approached by child services with a warrant to take her child into custody.
She said the relationship she was in was abusive, and she couldn't afford a lawyer at the time.
As her mother had retained Regular in her own child services cases, the woman testified that she did, too.
After her child was born, the woman said she attended Regular's law office with an access worker from child services. The worker stayed in the waiting room while the woman went into Regular's office.
'Couldn't believe it was happening again'
As they spoke about the legal matter, she said Regular grabbed the arm of the rolling chair she was sitting on and pulled her close to him.
"He started touching my legs. Squeezing again at my kneecap," she said, adding Regular told her that the two had a history together and he "would take care of me and get [my baby] back."
She said Regular put his hand up her skirt and sexually assaulted her.
"I just couldn't believe it was happening again," she said.
The woman said the access worker could tell she was upset after leaving the law office and encouraged the woman to tell her why.
She said she did tell both the access worker and a case worker some of what had happened, but admitted leaving some details out because she feared it would be used against her in a family court proceeding.
"I didn't trust them," she told the court.
Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officer Nicole Percey stands in the witness box during a break in proceedings Monday. Regular, who is accused of sexual violence, is seated facing her. (Ariana Kelland/CBC)
Two more charges of sexual assault were subsequently filed involving the same woman, for incidents alleged to have happened in 2012 and 2013.
She said she called Regular on two more occasions — once when she was charged with theft from a convenience store, and the other when she was asked to give a statement to police as a witness to a separate crime.
Given her previous experiences with Regular, she said she "figured if I had sex with him he would be my lawyer."
"I just knew it was going to happen," she said. "I never had any money."
She said she was scared her access to her children would be impacted as a result of her encounters with police.
Both times she allegedly had sex with Regular, she said she was "disgusted with myself."
After the last sexual encounter in Regular's office, she testified that she was upset and remembered telling him she didn't want to do it anymore.
She testified Regular replied: "You need to stay away from the people you've been hanging around with."
The woman told the court: "I felt like he was mocking me."
She said she went to police following an incident in 2019 when she encountered him outside his law office.
"I was angry. Upset. I was hurt. All the trauma from everything that happened to me, I just lost it," she said, detailing how she said she pushed and scratched him while calling him names.
She went to police the following year.
"That gave me the courage to go tell somebody the truth."
Regular allowed to sit with lawyers
The day begin with an application from Regular's defence team to allow him to sit outside the prisoner's dock with his lawyers.
Jerome Kennedy argued before Justice Vikas Khaladkar that sitting in the prisoner's box takes away from an individual's presumption of innocence, and asked what it serves aside from embarrassment of the accused.
Crown prosecutor Deidre Badcock called the prisoner's box "an equalizer for anyone who comes before the court."
"Does he have a presumption that he is more innocent than anyone else who sits in this prisoner's dock?" Badcock said, adding she wants Regular treated no differently than any other person who comes accused before the court.
Khaladkar ultimately sided with Regular and said he grants that accommodation to anyone who asks.
Officer's investigation questioned by defence
Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Const. Nicole Percey, the lead investigator on the case, said she became involved when she was called to a local law office to meet with a woman about a historical sexual assault complaint.
Percey spoke with the woman for about an hour and a half that day and later took a video- and audio-recorded statement at RNC headquarters in March 2020.
Percey said she used police files — one in which the complainant was a witness to a crime, and the other as the accused in a theft from a gas station — to corroborate the woman's story.
She also used notes that were contained in her child services file.
On cross-examination, defence lawyer Rosellen Sullivan questioned Percey about whether she ever pushed back on any inconsistencies in the complainant's story.
She pointed to a recorded police interview with the access worker who attended Regular's law office with the complainant. The employee told police during one portion of the interview that the woman told her that Regular rubbed her leg.
She did not mention that Regular assaulted the woman in any other way.
"Did you not consider that a massive contradiction?" asked Sullivan.
Percey said the witness also said she couldn't recall everything and that "given the time period, this was a decade later," it was not a "groundbreaking" inconsistency.
Private investigator and former RNC officer Campbell Feehan was hired by the defence to probe the case after Regular was charged.
He conducted recorded interviews with the complainant's mother and sister. Neither of them would speak with the RNC, and her mother later passed away.
Percey said it was strategic not to have approached the complainant's mother during the initial stages of the investigation, as her daughter warned that she was a client of Regular's and could likely tip him off.
Regular applied for publication ban
Regular has worked as a lawyer for decades on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula.
He went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2022 an unsuccessful effort to have his name shielded from publication in relation to the case now before the court.
Before that, Regular had been granted an interim ban in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court. The order temporarily blocked his name from being published in relation to the criminal proceedings.
CBC News and CTV News intervened, arguing the ban would interfere with the open-court principle and freedom of the press, and ultimately won.
The nation's top court declined to hear the matter, clearing the way for his identity to be publicly revealed.
