Case Summary
In the mid-1990s, Jamie Nelson was embroiled in a child custody dispute with his ex-girlfriend.1 A friend of hers, Cathy Fordham, was actively involved.2 When Nelson received more access rights to his son in family court, Fordham accused him of assaulting her.3 He was convicted and sentenced to four months in prison.4 Nelson was released on bail in late 1995. He was then granted some access rights to his son, which his ex-girlfriend prevented him from exercising until he threatened to go back to court.5
On April 29, 1996, after Nelson started seeing his son again, Fordham reported to police that he had sexually assaulted her at her apartment.6 The following day, Nelson went to his ex-girlfriend’s home to drop off his son after a visit. Police were waiting for him there. He was arrested and charged with assault, sexual assault, forcible confinement, and uttering death threats.7 He was denied bail.8
After a seven-day trial, Nelson was convicted on all charges on November 14, 1996.9 The Crown’s case hinged on Fordham’s evidence. The trial judge accepted her testimony over that of Nelson and his alibi witnesses, who swore that he had been at home with his family on the night of the alleged assault.10
Nelson was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.11 He maintained his innocence and thus refused to attend sexual offender programming, with the result that he was denied parole, and spent an extended period in solitary confinement.12 While he was in prison, his son was given up for adoption.13
Nelson was released in March 1999, by which point Fordham’s credibility as a witness had come into question. In January 1998, she made a sexual assault complaint against a man, A.E.M., that led to his arrest. Later that year, she made an assault complaint against two other men, A.K. and P.F. – which resulted in Fordham’s being charged with public mischief for laying a false complaint.14 During her trial for mischief in summer 2000, Fordham changed her narrative and testified that A.K. had also sexually assaulted her.15 She was convicted of mischief, after which the charge against A.E.M. was dropped.16
On October 25, 2002, Fordham pled guilty (though she later tried to strike this plea) to uttering death threats against S.B., a former lover, and was sentenced to six months in prison.17 The judge disbelieved much of her testimony and stated at Fordham’s sentencing hearing that she was “a manipulative person and a danger to society.”18 In essence, the judge concluded that she had successfully “use[d] the police and the courts as a weapon,” in the words of S.B..
(In some ways this conduct resembles that of incentivized informants who manipulate the court system for their own ends: see, for example, Yves Plamondon’s case, where the Crown’s star witness later admitted to perjuring himself. For further treatment of retaliatory false complaints, see the case of Jack White, where a care facility staff member falsely accused his colleague of sexually assaulting a resident.)
Nelson appealed his conviction in light of this new evidence that Fordham was not credible.19 The Ontario Court of Appeal considered this evidence, and on August 23, 2001, quashed Nelson’s conviction and acquitted him.20
Nelson subsequently sued for compensation, but was forced to abandon the lawsuit after spending $50,000 in legal fees.21