GUELPH – A 20-page email sent to senior OPP officials in March caused grief for a Centre Wellington woman advocating for her husband, a longtime Wellington OPP officer who is charged with several counts of sexual assault.
From the email spawned two separate, but related court proceedings:
- the allegation that Dolderman had broken court-ordered sentencing conditions to keep the peace and behave well; and
- a criminal charge of disclosing private communications.
From the Crown’s perspective, the issue wasn’t the email itself, but what it contained.
In 2020, Dolderman obtained secretly recorded conversations between police officers at the Rockwood OPP detachment discussing unproven sexual assault allegations against her husband.
Dolderman provided transcripts of the recordings to police, but after an investigation into their origins Dolderman was charged with obstruction of justice and convicted in February.
After quoting extensively from the recordings in her March email, Dolderman was faced with the criminal charge and the allegation that she had breached the conditions of her sentence.
The Crown was left mulling over the odds of prosecuting the criminal charge after Justice Dominique Kennedy dismissed the Crown’s allegation of a breach.
“I find that the Crown has not convinced me … that Ms. Dolderman does not sincerely hold the belief that this material will be relevant to her husband’s case, and that that is why she sent it to the OPP,” Kennedy said.
‘Not in the public interest to continue’
In Guelph court last week, the Crown ordered the charge against Dolderman (disclosing private communications) to be stayed, based on Kennedy’s June ruling.
“There is no reasonable basis to conclude that there will be a different result,” Crown attorney Andrew Allen told the court.
“Given that the accused did not breach her [conditional sentence order] … it is not in the public interest to continue [with] prosecution,” Allen said.
In an Aug. 4 email to the Advertiser, Alison Craig, Dolderman’s defence lawyer, wrote “Ms. Dolderman has always maintained that the sole purpose of her actions has been to advocate for an independent investigation into the actions of several OPP officers involved in her husband’s case …
“Given that her intent was solely to pursue that investigation, the charge was appropriately stayed.”
With the charge stayed, proceedings are halted or put on hold.
The charge hasn’t been withdrawn, and a stay of proceedings doesn’t determine guilt or innocence.
The Crown could bring the charge back before the court within one year, but after that point, the charge essentially disappears.
