Trial begins for Toronto defence lawyer charged with accessing, possessing child porn

WARNING: This story contains disturbing content.

Nineteen months after being arrested and charged with possessing and accessing child pornography, criminal defence lawyer Jamuar Vijaya stood up and said “not guilty” when he was arraigned on the charges.

Fifty-six-year-old Vijaya, a once clean-shaven and well-dressed lawyer, appeared much heavier than he looked in pictures from his past. Wearing blue jeans, a black cotton shirt with a red logo on the front and leather coat, Vijaya appeared before Justice Daniel Moore at the start of his judge-alone trial.

His lawyer Scott Hutchison told Moore that his client apologized for the way he was dressed but due to a health issue, most of his court clothes no longer fit.

Assistant Crown Attorney Lisa Henderson called her first witness, Toronto police Sgt. Michele Bond, who worked in the Toronto Police Child Exploitation Unit on Oct. 10, 2013 when she received a phone call from a 32 Division Const. Kenny Lam. She testified Lam told her that he was at the home of a complainant who said she was downloading family pictures because she was planning on leaving her husband and that was when she allegedly she came upon child pornography on her husband’s laptop.

Bond said Lam put the complainant, whose name is protected by a publication ban, on the telephone. She testified the woman, who identified herself as the wife of Jamuar Vijaya, “began to breakdown on the phone and cried.”

“I asked her what happened. Her girlfriend was helping her to download files from her husband’s hard drive to her own hard drive when her friend came upon files that contained child porn images and text files,” Bond told the court.

She testified that Vijaya’s wife told her the photos showed naked pre-teen girls, described as “underdeveloped.” The woman also reported finding text files in a folder of stories, one entitled “She was a perfect eight-year-old.”

Vijaya’s wife told the officer the couple had two daughters, aged three-and-a-half and 20 months old. Bond advised Lam not to leave the computer unattended and testified she knew a laptop and a hard drive existed.

Bond said she also spoke to the friend of Vijaya’s wife who told her she saw thumbnails of an approximately 13-year-old girl, waist up, with small breasts. The friend reported also seeing stories and videos. One of the videos was entitled “40 Virgin” and the other was labelled “I screwed my daughter’s friend.”

“We had a very upset complainant and two small children in the house. The complainant had to be protected and the evidence had to be secured,” Bond told Henderson.

Bond said she took a taxi to 32 Division where she videotaped and interviewed Vijaya’s wife and her friend, though not under oath.

“We cautioned her. She (Vijaya’s wife) herself a lawyer, we believed she understood,” she testified.

During the interview, Bond said she recognized that Vijaya’s wife was coming to terms with the fact that she was an abused spouse and wife and was very concerned about her daughters now that she had found child porn.

Bond told the court that she decided to seize the hard drives and the laptop and place them in secure lockers at nearby 32 Division and then would write a warrant to view them. She testified that on the evening of Oct. 10, 2013, she had Vijaya’s wife sign a consent form allowing her to seize all the electronic devices.

She testified she went away on a training course to Germany and when she returned, she wrote the warrant. The warrant was executed on Nov. 1, 2013, which is when Bond went back to 32 Division and retrieved the property. The Children’s Aid Society was also advised of the investigation. Bond testified they considered interviewing the children, but they decided against it.

Vijaya was arrested and charged on Oct. 20, 2017, four years after the investigation began.

Hutchison indicated that he will be challenging whether the seizure of the electronic devices taken from Vijaya’s home on the night of Oct. 10, 2013, was done lawfully.

Vijaya refused to comment outside court.

According to the Law Society of Ontario website, he now has interlocutory restrictions on his ability to practice law including not being able to be unsupervised with a person under the age of 18 nor can he place personal data on any electronic devices used for the practice of law.

The trial continues.