A Mountie on trial in central Alberta says at no point did he ask a woman in custody to lift her shirt and show him her breasts.
Const. Jason Andrew Tress is facing charges of sexual assault and breach of trust in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench. Tress, who is 32, pleaded not guilty on the first day of the trial.
The complainant, 22-year-old Melissa Heinrichs, told court earlier this week that Tress twice asked her to lift her shirt while she was in RCMP custody on July 1, 2016.
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Heinrichs, who agreed to have a publication ban on her name lifted, told court on Monday that she and her boyfriend at the time were living at a hotel in Red Deer when Mounties showed up to investigate a firearms complaint.
She testified officers searched their Red Deer hotel room but found no firearms — they were discovered later under a nearby stairwell.
She said the first request to lift her shirt was while they were inside a police vehicle travelling to the downtown Red Deer RCMP detachment after Heinrichs had been arrested.
Heinrichs said Tress made vulgar comments about the way she was dressed and said he could see through her cut-off T-shirt.
She said once they were alone in the detachment’s fingerprint room, Tress asked her to stand against a wall for a mug shot and to show him her breasts.
“I was asked quite a few times,” she said Monday. “He was being creepy, for lack of a better word, or unprofessional.”
She eventually complied with his request, Heinrichs told the judge who’s hearing the case without a jury.
Heinrichs told court that Tress went through her cellphone, scrolled through her camera roll and found several nude photos of herself, along with videos of her boyfriend taken from the waist down.
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Tress took the stand in his own defence on Thursday and refuted both allegations, but noted that he did comment that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
He testified that there was nothing sexual about what took place inside the vehicle.
“Melissa, you are going to jail … I noticed you are not wearing a bra,” he told court he recalled saying. “Is there anything I can get for you?”
Defence lawyer Robb Beeman then asked if he made any inappropriate sexual remarks.
“No,” replied Tress. “The only thing she may have got that opinion from is when I said I noticed she wasn’t wearing a bra.”
Beeman then questioned Tress about the fingerprint room allegation.
“Did you ask her to expose her breasts,” Beeman asked.
“Never,” Tress insisted.
“Did that ever happen,” he asked.
“Never.”
Beaman said the case against his client comes down to the credibility of Heinrichs, who admitted to being a drug user since she was 16 and who has several drug-related convictions on her criminal record.
During cross-examination, Heinrichs admitted she may have been under the influence of opioids or crystal meth while giving statements to police about four weeks after the alleged encounter with Tress.
Crown prosecutor Photini Papadatou questioned Tress about why he took Heinrichs into the detachment’s fingerprint room, where there was no video camera, and not to one of the three interview rooms that did.
Tress said he wanted to protect her privacy from her boyfriend at the time, Keifer Collins, who was also in custody.
Tress, who remains on leave from the RCMP, is to face more cross-examination on Friday before the trial moves into closing arguments.
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Tress will be back in court next week for trial on another (unrelated) incident from 2016 in Red Deer involving a female complainant.
He will face a third sexual assault trial in November for an incident which took place near Faust, Alta. in 2012.
— With files from Caley Ramsay, Global News, and
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