OTTAWA — Bad things happen to ex-girlfriends of Cody Boast: floods of text messages, demands, confrontations, and sometimes naked pictures on Facebook.Boast, a former assistant to Conservative MP Wai Young of Vancouver, has pleaded guilty to a variety of charges involving two ex-girlfriends, including criminal harassment. Young’s office staff refused to answer any questions about when he worked there, but say he has left.
It’s a long fall for the athletic young University of Ottawa student who attended a barbecue with Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge because of his service helping visually impaired runners.
Boast, now 22, met Will and Kate on their 2011 Canadian tour at the Celebration of Youth barbecue at Rideau Hall, honouring young people who help others.
“They (the royal couple) came over and introduced themselves and they had a chance to speak to most of us. It was pretty cool,” Boast told a Citizen reporter after the barbecue.
He was then a running guide to Noella Klawitter, a visually impaired runner from Carleton Place. At the end of the evening there was a group photo of all the guests with the royal couple, the prime minister and the other dignitaries.
“Everyone was in the photo and we were really close to the royal couple. It was really neat,” he said at the time.
A photo on his Facebook page shows a smiling Boast posing with his arm around Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate in the 2012 presidential election.
But on Tuesday morning, Boast sat quietly in an Ottawa courtroom listening to details of charges. He had already pleaded guilty to harassing one ex-girlfriend, and on Tuesday he pleaded guilty to criminal harassment of another young woman. By a court order, the women’s names can’t be published.
The trouble began in 2008. Boast was upset when a relationship broke up. He was sentenced to 18 months’ probation in 2009 for harassing the first girlfriend, with a condition not to contact her during those 18 months.
But before that time was up he started emailing her at length, bragging about his academic and athletic performance (at one point he set a U of O track record for 1,000 metres). He emailed two of her friends and showed up at the Ritual Night Club, knowing there was a good chance she would be there too.
When he met her there he insulted her in front of her friends, got in a fight with one of the friends, and was kicked out of the club.
Because these events took place while he was still banned from contacting her, he was charged with breach of probation in April, 2011. The next month, Young was elected to Parliament. Her office won’t say when she hired him or whether anyone did a criminal check.
A year later, history began to repeat itself. He had a relationship with another U of O student, and though it only lasted seven weeks it was long enough to take photos of her naked.
Two months after they broke up, in June of 2012, Boast put those on Facebook. He kept texting the young woman after she asked him to stop, and finally she reported him to the university’s harassment officer.
That didn’t stop Boast. Two weeks later, a little after midnight, he shouted from the street outside her home: “Facebook’s got you now!” He had posted naked photos again, on a second Facebook account.
The young woman believed Boast was following her around town, although his defence lawyer said he was actually trying to contact other friends.
The court documents say the woman “feared for her safety.”
On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to criminal harassment and not abiding by an undertaking to keep the peace.
He will be sentenced in April.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Tom Spears
No comments:
Post a Comment