Uncover - S11: "Carrie Low VS." E4: Charged

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

An arrest is finally made in Carrie’s case, but she wonders why only one man has been charged. CORRECTION: Sunny Marriner was Executive Director of the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre for 5 years, not 17 years as mentioned in the episode. She also worked at the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Ottawa for 17 years previously. We regret the error. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/carrie-low-vs-transcripts-listen-1.6218432

From CBC Podcasts and The Fifth Estate, Brainwashed is a multi-part investigation into the CIA's experiments in mind control. From the Cold War and MKUltra to the so-called War on Terror, we learn about a psychiatrist who uses patients as human guinea pigs and what happens when the military and medicine collide. Listen to Brainwashed on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. It's February 2020.

Carrie wakes up to a world blanketed in white. Freezing temperatures and thick snowfall have forced businesses and schools to close. But Carrie is still off work and rarely leaves the house anyway, coping with anxiety, nightmares, and sleeplessness. It's been nearly two years since she first reported to police that she was abducted and raped. Carrie's story has made national headlines.

She's taken the police to court over the investigation of her case. She also has civil legal actions pending. Carrie says despite everything, it has felt like two years of waiting. But this day turns out to be different. Carrie learns there's a big development in her case. Carrie learns there's a big development in her case. And so I got the call on February 13th. They call to say the night before they arrested this person who I have no idea who he is. Halifax Regional Police have charged a 33-year-old man.

So it's now official that he's been charged. 33-year-old man. So it's now official that he's been charged. Originally he was charged with forcible confinement and sexual assault. And then after the charges were filed in court and they were read out loud, they added the third charge of administering an obnoxious substance. And again, I was left with a whole lot of questions and they won't answer me. They've tight-lipped everything since I came to the media.

And when I got the phone call from the Crown, I asked her, like, well, what about everybody else? Why has no one else been arrested? When Halifax Regional Police released details of the arrest to media, they did not name the man publicly. Investigators have not laid charges against anyone else. I'm Maggie Rahr, and this is Carrie Lowe vs. Episode 4, Charged. In the winter of 2021, Constable Jarrell Smith and I meet to drive out to the site where he believes Carrie was taken. We're leaving the bar where Carrie suspects she was drugged, on the road that leads to the trailer where Carrie says she woke up.

So, I mean, you know, you'll be able to see how quick it is to get somebody in a car and out here, and then that's it. And there'd be even less traffic at that time. No traffic. On a Friday night at, you know, one o'clock in the morning. Yep. No traffic, no cops, because all the cops were down at the fight. A bunch of, you know, as many cops as they could

went to this large fight scene, and those guys just drove over with her. A fight was taking place outside the bar around the time Carrie says she was losing consciousness. When you have a chaotic scene, there's nobody watching you. They're watching the fight. They're watching this big crowd of people. So, you know, if you're going to do anything, you have the cover of this huge fight and you can do what you want.

This may be the moment Carrie described, seeing flashing lights and a police cruiser, when she says she was being held down in the back of a car. The route out of the city is a busy highway, leading to suburban bedroom communities, and turns quickly into a rural route, with houses dotting the road, becoming more and more spread apart. On the way, we pass the community RCMP detachment, where Smith tells me he was posted before he joined the SAIT unit. This is the area I used to work.

I worked out here for three and a half or four years. Yeah, keep driving. And this road will take you all the way up to the trailer. It's kind of a long kind of winding road. Alright, it's coming up just a... Okay. Alright, here it is here. That's it?

Yeah. Where the fire's going in the chimney. We're sitting outside a two-story house with a farm behind it with cows milling around in a small fenced field. Because the area is so close-knit, Smith says he already knew who the property owners were and who else lived there. So she would have come right out here, right onto the road. In the middle of nowhere, not knowing where she's at. It is strange to be in this place after hearing Carrie's story so

vividly over the past two years. It's just a house. Nothing about it stands out. But I cannot deny the eerie feeling that settles in the car as we park outside. Smith believes that two of the men who are connected to this property were involved in Carrie's attack. Smith tells me he believes they were the two men he spotted on the security video footage from the bar and who he brought into the SAIT unit for questioning in the summer. To date, neither of those men have been charged.

Smith tells me what he says he told Carrie, that he believes there are additional suspects, that more charges could be laid. Back in April of 2019, nearly a year after Kerry first reported to police, she says an investigator told her that when the evidence gathered from her rape kit and clothing was first sent for processing,

the DNA samples were too weak to confirm any suspects. Eventually, the samples were retested at a bigger lab capable of more advanced and sensitive testing. Kerry says police told her this new lab was able to confirm a DNA match, which may have led to the arrest of a 33-year-old man. He is charged with forcible confinement, sexual assault, and administering a noxious substance. Nearly a year passes before there is any movement. In January of 2021, Carrie meets the two Crown prosecutors

who will handle her case in court. Carrie has a support person with her, an advocate from the non-profit organization that has been providing counseling. I spoke with Carrie on the phone before the meeting. She told me she was nervous. Also in the meeting to prepare for the trial is Constable Steve Rideout, the lead investigator on the case who made the arrest. Carrie is reminded of her first meeting with Constable Rideout at the SAIT unit a year earlier. Carrie says the officer pulled up the security footage that was seized from the bar,

the tape that was recording the night before she reported to police. Kerry says Constable Rideout told her he wanted to review it together. There's one point in this video where this man pulls me in close and then I pull away from him. And that has sort of been the question of, was that when my drink was tampered? And he was saying, oh, look, the guy's kissing you. And I said, no, he's not kissing me. And he was adamant to tell me three times in that meeting that he was kissing me. And I said, no, he's not. To be clear, Carrie says she was watching a video of her last moments of clarity before being abducted.

She says she felt Rideout was implying she was consensually kissing a stranger, and she kept telling him she wasn't. I've never seen the video footage, but Carrie and Constable Rideout's disagreement over what is happening in the video would escalate at their next meeting. And so when I was in this meeting with the Crown, fast forward, I brought that up on how, looking back on how I was treated over the course of the investigation, how not trauma-informed of a response by police that was to a victim and how that affected me. Now, Carrie tells me she's worried about cooperating with a police officer to prepare for the trial when she isn't sure he would listen to her, be sensitive to her situation,

or believe her. be sensitive to her situation, or believe her. And this is the same police force she's already taken to court over the handling of her case. When I was asking him, he would keep deflecting from the question. And I asked him three times, it's a yes or no answer. Did you say that to me? Did you ask me that? Finally, he said yes. And anyway, he got pretty upset about that and that's when the Crown, one of the Crowns,

had to put their hand on his arm to tell him to calm down. Because he did say, he's like, I was told to come to this meeting and keep my mouth shut, but I'm not going to sit here and listen to you berate me as a police officer or the department I work for. I remember at one point when this was happening, I was in that fight or flight mode and I remember turning my chair and looking at the door thinking I was going to leave. Like I just couldn't believe what was happening in the moment and I didn't know what to do but I chose to stay. I turned my chair back around and I kept composure and I continued on. But it was very emotional.

And it was very disturbing and you know I'm glad I had a support person there because she too was affected by this. It affected her to see a man, you know he was the only man in the room. We were four women and here was a police officer, so someone in power, of authority, and he really was showing his displeasure with me. It was just shocking. I reached out to the RCMP and Constable Rideout to ask about these allegations, but as it concerns an ongoing case,

they declined to respond. But as it concerns an ongoing case, they declined to respond. Carrie says she wasn't prepared for the experience of working within the legal system. It still feels like I'm always going into dealing with the police, even though I know they're not the police. It's still that I have that guard up, that untust feeling, that anxiety, not knowing, and frustration. Sunny Mariner says none of what Carrie is describing comes as a surprise to her. The police and Crown, I don't think anybody's ever denied that they are each other's peer and colleagues.

They're sort of two peas in the same pod. Sunny Mariner ran the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre for 17 years. She's advised nationally for the rights of survivors of sexual violence and has worked with police directly to improve investigations. The Crown is there to protect the interests of the state, and the defense is there to protect the interests of the accused person. There's no one who's there to protect the interests of the survivor. And often Crowns almost portray themselves as though they are the survivor's lawyer, but at the end of the day, they're not at all. And many people don't realize

that the police legally owe no duty of care to a victim, none at all, which means that there's a duty of care owed to the public and the public good. There's a duty of care owed to the accused person or a suspect. Again, no one owes any duty of care to the victim, including the Crown. When you have a system that's arranged like that, is it any surprise that the people that come out of it feeling most mangled or most traumatized are the survivors themselves, the people that experience the harm? Carrie decides to raise her concerns about Constable Rideout to his supervisor to tell him about what happened in the meeting with the Crown. And I did talk to him about what had happened.

He did apologize, but his response was that I needed to understand that police officers sometimes get emotionally attached to some cases and therefore I should be more understanding in his reaction. And that's when I broke down and I started to cry on the phone. And I told him and I said, you know, what about my emotions and my feelings and what I've been going through? No one seems to care about that. And I said, in the future, don't ever tell another sexual assault victim that they need to understand a police officer's emotions and feelings.

So I said, well, you know, I'm contacting you because you're a supervisor, you know, and I would like to have this addressed, and I don't feel comfortable meeting with him again. And he did advise me that if I had any issues, to a complaint so I'm back to another complaint again. Yeah so I that day I did file a complaint because I want to make things right. If I keep doing it the way that they asked me to and they keep failing maybe at some point they'll recognize that there's an issue. That's my hope. That's all I have left to hang on to at this point. At first, Carrie says she just wanted Constable Rideout

to apologize for the way the viewing of the security footage unfolded and for what happened when she confronted him about it in the meeting with the Crown. But once again, she says she was drawn into a formal complaint process. In the document, Kerry stated that, aside from an apology, she would like to ensure Constable Rideout receives trauma-informed training, and, if he already has, that he be retrained because she,

quote, does not want Constable Rideout to treat other victims how he treated her. The complaint could have been concluded here, with what the RCMP calls an informal resolution. But Kerry says she was informed that Rideout would not participate. The RCMP then conducted an official investigation into the matter. The officer leading the process asked the Crown to provide statements about Rideout's behavior on the day of the meeting. The Crown declined. Kerry is told there is nothing more to be done. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news.

So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Carrie is standing outside my front door in a bright yellow rain jacket. She has a beleaguered, faraway look. Carrie has come over today because she has news to share about her original complaint against the police. Remember, this is the complaint that was originally rejected by police, arguing that Carrie hadn't complained soon enough. Justice Anne E. Smith of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court delivered her decision in April of 2020, instructing police to acknowledge and respond

to Kerry's complaint about the investigation. Now, eight months later, the Halifax Regional Police have responded. The disciplinary decision is seven pages long. This is so hard to read. Yeah, let's just get to the point where it's like... Once again, Carrie and I are sitting at my kitchen table. She has documents printed out in front of me

as she scrolls through this latest file on her phone. Honestly, Maggie, I don't know what they were thinking with this report. So I don't know what in their right mind they were thinking by sending me this. That's where I'm really left baffled. How can an actual police department send me incorrect evidence and facts in a report? Especially knowing how detailed I am and I have records of every time I met with them, emails and like they're screwing themselves, really. Anyway. So the complaint in myself, Carrie Lowe,

member complained of Constable Novakovic, Police Department, Halifax Regional Police, date of complaint filed May 13th, 2019. Police received a call from Carrie Lowe indicating she was at the Dartmouth General Hospital getting the same kid done. At 1600 hours, Constable Novakovic, a trauma-informed officer,

was dispatched to the hospital to speak to Ms. Lowe. It's here on page two that Carrie says she finds something she says is inaccurate. The report states Constable Novakovic was dispatched to the hospital. Kerry is reading a police document claiming she called them. I've never called the police on that day. That call never came through. You went to the hospital?

I went to the hospital. And then they were saying at 4 or at 1600 hours, Constable Novakovic, a trauma-informed officer, was dispatched to the hospital to speak to Ms. Lowe. That didn't happen either. He was already there. He wasn't part of SANE. He was a patrol officer. Remember, Carrie and her daughter were in the ER together as a sexual assault nurse examiner administered Carrie's rape kit. That's when the nurse asked if Carrie would consent to speak with police, suggesting that an officer just happened to be in the hospital waiting room. The police disciplinary decision states that while not a member of the SAIT unit,

states that while not a member of the SAIT unit, Novakovic is a trauma-informed officer. But Kerry says it did not feel as if he was trauma-informed. I didn't have a ride home either. Like I had to take a cab. So I think now looking back, if the officer was really trauma-informed and really was, you know, investigating a crime, giving me a plastic bag to go home to put my clothes in, why wouldn't the officer, one, make sure I had a ride home, or two, follow me home and collect it right then and there? The inquiry determined that Constable Novakovic did not pick up and secure the bag containing Carrie's clothing in a timely manner.

For several months, Carrie asked Halifax Regional Police for a copy of the state unit's policy. She received it in April of 2019. Since then, she's been able to refer back to it to reach an opinion on whether they upheld their own standards. He didn't follow Halifax Regional Police's investigating sexual assault policy. He did not say I'm a trauma-informed officer. He did not ask me if I wanted a female officer present. I was never offered that, ever, to this day. Despite all of the focus on Constable Novakovic,

Kerry says he was only involved in the first days of the investigation. I feel like they are throwing him under the bus. I don't feel... I don't feel the way he handled things was proper, but I also don't feel that he is to blame for everything that went wrong I blame the duty supervisor and to this day no one will tell me who that duty supervisor is nobody in the court ordered report or in the disciplinary decision there's no reference to the duty supervisor

or any decisions that were made by the duty supervisor over the course of that weekend. I can't find that information out. I've asked. It's unknown to me. Because from my understanding, any officer, you know, at the end of the day, goes in, does their notes, lets the supervisor know, these at the end of the day, goes in, does their notes, lets their supervisor know,

these are the calls I were on, this is, you know. So at that point, that's when that duty supervisor should have called in and they didn't. And I don't know who it is. When I spoke with Sergeant Linda Gray, July 12th of 2018, she had said to me that when the call had come in from Novakovic that he was at the hospital reporting of me being there of a sexual assault, the supervising officer on call that weekend should have called Sainton. Carrie finds more details in the report that she says are troubling. This is another slip which I really found interesting. On February 25th, the accused is arrested and interviewed and charged and released by way of undertaking.

He was arrested on February 12th. Right. So, for me, as a civilian and a victim, the police are telling me that these, like, and I'm supposed to trust these people to investigate and they don't even know when they've arrested somebody? One of the issues that comes up in this report and that has come up throughout Kerry's fight

is that the state unit is run by two separate entities who operate under two separate policies, the Halifax Regional Police and the RCMP. The report notes poor communication and failure to follow up with Kerry on Constable Smith. However, as the report states, since Smith is RCMP, the Halifax Regional Police cannot investigate this aspect. It noted that since Officer Rideout has taken over the investigation, quote,

the file progressed in a more positive manner. The report concludes that two detectives and a staff sergeant have been added to the SAIT unit. It also notes that disciplinary action has been taken. There is only one person who has been penalized. The penalty issued to Constable Novakovic was a penalty of eight hours.

Meaning his pay was withheld for eight hours of on-duty service. To me, it felt like another stab to my everything, like a penalty of eight hours and I have a penalty of the rest of my life for what they've done. You know, like it's one thing to deal with the trauma and we'll get into that more about how that part is, but I'm constantly being traumatized by this police department over and over and over. And it doesn't stop. Like we're over two and a half years, we're two and a half years later and they're still traumatizing me with this stuff. I'm a woman who's coming to you telling you that I was kidnapped against my will and I was gang raped. This is what I'm telling you. And that's not a priority?

I was drugged and taken and gang raped and that's not a priority? Kerry's been expecting a call with an update on the upcoming trial. Do you mind if I call Victim Services right quick? Yeah, go for it. She left a message last week and I called her back and she had an update on the files. Hi, you can check the services off. Yeah, I know. Kerry says she'll try back later.

Besides my school, it's my other full-time job. This is my life. This is going to be part of my life probably for the rest of my life. And, you know, when my cases are over, I still want to continue and be an advocate and fight for others. So this is my life now. Before she leaves, the phone rings, and it's the call she's been waiting for. Right, okay.

The victim services contact explains that a decision has been made by the Crown. One of the charges against the man police arrested has been dropped. It's the administering of a noxious substance charge. Kerry is told there isn't enough evidence to make the charge stick. Right, okay. The defense requests to proceed

not in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, tasked with handling the most serious crimes, but instead to drop it down to the provincial court. The Crown agrees. The victim services worker tells Carrie this way she won't have to wait as long for the trial. Okay. Have a good day. Bye.

Wow. 16, 17, 23, 24. 16, 17, 23, 24. A date has been set in the criminal trial. It's scheduled to go to court in November of 2021. Despite what sounds like the first bit of good news in a long time, Carrie has her doubts. the first bit of good news in a long time, Carrie has her doubts.

And I'm to the point that I know, I feel like I'm not ever going to get justice. I know that. Sorry. It's about the whole process. It's about the whole justice system and how they continue to fail gender-based violence victims. And it's just become part of my life. And I've seen so many failures that I know that can be fixed, so I can't walk away.

I wouldn't be able to live with myself now if I walked away from all this. Just a few weeks after sitting in my kitchen, Carrie and I meet at a cafe in North End, Halifax. Carrie arrives wearing a defund the police mask. Funnily enough, we're waiting to meet police officer, Jarrell Smith. He has promised to stand alongside Carrie in her fight against police to find out what really happened during the investigation, even if that means testifying in court to support her.

Smith arrives and they greet each other warmly. This is where it will be. Exactly. So maybe someday he'll come on board. I think it's happening right now, Carrie. Smith arrives and they greet each other warmly. This is where it will be. Exactly. And you know. So maybe someday he'll come on board. I think it's happening right now, Carrie. And we'll start our own organization and fight the machine, right?

Most certainly. Yeah. You know, I've already told you, I'll help you anywhere and I'll help anything. I know. Sorry. It's not necessarily tears of upset, it's tears of just

gratitude really. To be able to have Jarell like to support me in that way. I know. Sorry. I'm good. I'm actually quite lucky, very lucky, as a survivor to have Jarell because women don't have that. So for me, it's a blessing. So thank you.

You're welcome. Yeah. It's hard to accept a thank you out of this situation. I know, but it is, like, you have no idea how much it means to me. I mean, that's, unfortunately, you know, I wish things could have worked out differently. Carrie considers Jarrell Smith an indispensable ally in her fight, which is why she says it's devastating just one month later

when Smith abruptly abandons Carrie and begins to assist the defense. Coming up on the final episode of Carrie Lowe vs. Terry Lowe versus. Every aspect of this situation has been unprecedented. And in fact, I would say that everyone in this circumstance is saying, this is not something we've ever seen before. And we don't entirely know how to address it. This is a criminal trial.

And for someone to come in and try and hijack this whole process is, I don't have words. I really, I guess at the end of the day, don't have words to describe how hurtful it is. This series is produced by Janice Evans and Nancy Hunter and written by me, Maggie Rahr. Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Our digital producer is Emily Cannell. Fact-checking by Emily Mathieu. Theme music by Aqua Alta. Legal advice from Stephanie Lapierre and Danielle Stone.

Our senior producer is Chris Oak. And the executive producer of CBC Podcasts is Arif cbc.ca slash podcasts.