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Mississauga News - Oct 13, 2006 - Louie Rosella
Officer's girl talk on video: Prosecutor
Two teenage Mississauga girls who testified today against a Peel Regional Police officer charged with stalking them said they felt "kind of spooked" when a man they didn't know began following them and asking them questions on several occasions last summer.
The testimony of the girls is only part of the evidence that will show Peel Const. Roger Yeo, 36, is guilty of discredible conduct, Peel Police lawyer Linda Bordeleau told a Police Services Act disciplinary hearing.
Yeo has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Bordeleau said video footage taken by the Peel Police Mobile Surveillance Unit will show Yeo interacting with young girls on numerous occasions.
An undercover police officer posing as a young student will also take the stand and say she was followed by the officer in his SUV to the point where she feared for her safety, said Bordeleau.
Dr. Peter Collins, a forensic psychiatrist, will testify that men who persistently follow adolescent girls "under false pretenses," tend to have an "erotic attraction" to girls in this age group, Bordeleau said.
There is a "pattern of behaviour that we would describe as discredible in nature and...showing discredit to the reputation of Peel Regional Police," Bordeleau said.
Bordeleau won a motion today to allow female witnesses under the age of 16 to testify behind a screen to protect their identity.
The Mississauga News has chosen to only identify the girls testifying in this hearing by their initials.
L.F., a 14-year-old Meadowvale girl, said that on three separate occasions last summer, a man in a grey SUV followed her and some friends and, on one occasion, tried to lure her closer to his vehicle.
She said on June 8, 2005, the man parked in a church parking lot where she and her friends were walking en route to school and asked the girls for directions to Erin Mills Town Centre.
L.F. testified she told him it was on Erin Mills Pkwy., to which he replied, "I can't hear you, come closer," the girl said.
"I told him the (school) bell is about to ring and I just kept walking," she said.
On two other occasions, the girls saw the SUV hovering around them, L.F. said, and she told her school principal about it and wrote down the SUV's licence plate.
"I felt uncomfortable and sort of scared," she said.
K.W., an 18-year-old from Meadowvale, said a man in a vehicle she described as a silver Jeep stopped near her on three occasions while she was walking home from Meadowvale Town Centre on Sept. 18, 2005.
"It was weird because other cars were passing him (at the stop sign)," she said.
On the third stop, in which he blocked the sidewalk and prevented the girl from crossing the street, the driver offered her a ride, she testified.
"It kind of spooked me that he had done that," she said.
The girl told him she didn't need a ride and he responded with "No, where's Windwood Dr.," suggesting the girl misheard him, she said.
She gave him directions and walked home.
"His window was half-up so I couldn't get a look at him," she said.
Internal affairs investigators allege an off-duty officer was monitoring and following girls as young as 14 around schools, shopping malls and recreational areas in Erin Mills and other parts of the city between June 8 and Oct. 7 of 2005.
Other girls are expected to testify when the hearing resumes Oct. 18.
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