GUELPH – The Crown’s office wants an Elora man put behind bars for sexually assaulting a former Goofie Newfie Pub employee he had authority over.
Former Goofie Newfie business partner Robert O’Brien was charged with four counts of sexual assault in 2023.
The 51-year-old was found guilty in June on two counts following a six-day trial.
O’Brien sexually assaulted Mackenzie Osborne on a bus ride from a work party, touching her buttocks and breasts, and later at the pub by placing his hand on her buttocks – all without Osborne’s consent.
A publication ban prohibiting Osborne from being identified was lifted in Guelph court on Oct. 21 at her request.
Reading from a victim impact statement on Tuesday, Osborne said she was only 20 when a man she considered her boss, 30 years her senior, sexually assaulted her.
She described herself as once being a “hopeful” and “ambitious” woman who is now “broken” and “powerless.”
The effects of the assault have seeped into every corner of her life and caused her to move away from her hometown, Osborne explained.
The “cost of his actions has been paid by me,” she said. “I’ll be paying for it the rest of my life.”
She added, “I will not allow silence to protect the man who harmed me.”
Assistant Crown attorney Matthew Yassa suggested Justice Nicole Redgate sentence O’Brien to 18 months in jail, followed by three years of probation.
Yassa argued a sentence behind bars is justified because it’s not O’Brien’s first offence.
In a 2016 case, he was charged with sexually assaulting former Goofie Newfie employee Haley Baumber.
He later pleaded guilty to a lesser assault charge.
Yassa argued O’Brien didn’t learn from the first offence, when he was placed on probation for nine months and given a conditional sentence.
O’Brien didn’t receive a criminal record despite being found guilty.
Yassa added O’Brien has “shown no remorse for what he has done.”
That the sexual offence against Osborne increased to under-clothes contact demonstrated an escalation on O’Brien’s part, Yassa said.
O’Brien’s defence lawyer, Brennan Smart, argued Osborne wasn’t in a vulnerable position or incapacitated when she was assaulted, and that the sexual activity didn’t rise to the level of penetration – factors that differentiate this case from similar ones.
Yassa pushed back, saying Osborne should be safe at work regardless.
Smart suggested a year of house arrest, followed by another year of probation for O’Brien.
“The fury of the community,” the defence lawyer said, is such a strong deterrent, “it’s hard to imagine an actual jail sentence increasing it.”
The case has dragged on since police first laid charges in June 2023, with “profound” collateral consequences since then, which Smart argued were mitigating.
“This is a matter that has received extreme coverage in the Fergus community, both through conventional media and through social media,” Smart said.
He suggested Redgate “take notice that Fergus is a relatively small, tight community” and that the “denunciation is profound.”
The defence painted a dichotomy of a dedicated father of two, an accomplished coach of local sports and a man who had done bad things.
“He has been ostracized in the community,” Smart said, adding O’Brien no longer leaves his home.
O’Brien has stayed out of trouble in the 28 months it has taken for the case to wind through the courts, Smart noted.
He argued the case fit the test for a sentence term served in the community: no minimum, a sentence of less than two years and the community’s safety wouldn’t be threatened.
Yassa, the prosecutor, argued Fergus isn’t the only community to consider.
“How would [society] take it if he was basically sentenced to house arrest?” Yassa said, adding the public’s faith in justice is at stake.
Further aggravating the offence, the prosecutor underscored, was O’Brien’s position of trust and authority when he sexually assaulted Osborne.
O’Brien’s exact role at the pub at the time of the sexual assaults has been unclear.
Justice Redgate asked Smart several times to clarify the sticking point.
Smart conceded O’Brien was on the business title after saying he had “a role” in it and assisted there.
The business is now owned entirely by his wife.
The Advertiser previously confirmed O’Brien was listed on the Goofie Newfie’s liquor licence, along with his wife, prior to being removed following a licence suspension earlier this year.
“Clearly this was a position of trust [and] a breach of trust,” Smart said, later adding O’Brien “was in a position of authority.”
However, Smart stressed O’Brien’s wife has remained the “managing operator” and the “main proprietor.”
“He didn’t have hands-on, day-to-day role in the operation of the Goofie Newfie,” Smart told court.
“He (O’Brien) is completely extricated from that business and that will not change.”
O’Brien did not address court. He is expected to be sentenced after November.
