'Creeper Hunter' acquitted of rare intimidation charge

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It wasn’t just what Jason Nassr said, but what he didn’t get a chance to say.

And not knowing what the 45-year-old Creeper Hunter TV creator was going to utter before he was cut off after blurting out the name of a prosecutor’s child at his 2023 jury trial cast enough doubt for a judge to acquit him of intimidating a justice participant.

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“After considering all the evidence, I am less than sure that Mr. Nassr’s purpose in referring to (the prosecutor’s child) was to instill fear in him,” said Superior Court Justice James Stribopoulos in his decision Wednesday at the end of Nassr’s three-day trial.

“Similarly, I’m left in a state of doubt concerning whether Mr. Nassr subjectively appreciated the likely impact on (the prosecutor) of referring to his child.”

While Stribopoulos said he “unreservedly” accepted the prosecutor’s testimony that when Nassr said, “I know you have a kid named (child’s name),” he was “immediately overcome with gut-wrenching sense of fear.”

However, Nassr followed up the comment with “Now I…” before Superior Court Justice Alissa Mitchell “understandably” cut him off, excused the jury and admonished Nassr for making the personal comment, raising his voice and losing his cool.

“Mr. Nassr never finished saying whatever he planned to after mentioning (the prosecutor’s) child,” Stribopoulos said. “However, it is readily apparent that he had been trying to say something. It is impossible to know what Mr. Nassr intended to say before the trial judge interrupted him.”

The testy cross-examination happened on Jan 31, 2023, at Nassr’s lengthy trial in London stemming from his activities as a self-styled online vigilante who claimed to track down potential child predators. He would pose on adult dating sites as a young woman, and, once someone was interested, migrate the highly sexualized conversations to text messages, where “she” would reveal “herself” to be a 12- or 13-year-old girl.

His catches would be meticulously recorded and documented with the goal to set up in-person “gotcha” meetings. Nassr would film the meeting and the materials would be edited for the Creeper Hunter TV website, complete with names, ages and hometowns. Some episodes were reported to the police by viewers.

Nassr was charged after he contacted a London-area man 10 months after first communicating with the phone number. The man told Nassr that his phone had been hacked at the time of the initial calls.

Nassr persisted in accusing the man of child predation. Not long after, the police opened an investigation. The man took his own life.

The suicide prompted London police to check into Nassr’s activities. A search of his Windsor apartment turned up a mountain of digital evidence, with some fitting the definition of child pornography.

Ultimately, Nassr was convicted of extortion, harassment by telecommunications and production and distribution of child pornography through written word. He was dealt a two-year conditional sentence, with 18 months spent in house arrest, followed by two years of probation.

Nassr is appealing.

The rarely seen intimidation charge was laid after the trial.

Stribopolous heard that Nassr had some history with the prosecutor in 2019, when Nassr was called as a witness at an Ontario Court preliminary hearing for a target charged with child luring.

The luring charge never went forward. The prosecutor testified that Nassr “was not a fan of his” and Nassr wanted to file an abuse of process charge, claiming he was charged for exactly what the Crown had encouraged him to do.

At the trial, Nassr’s defence lawyer was excused after the solicitor-client relationship broke down and Nassr continued on his own.

During the cross-examination, what angered Nassr was the prosecutor’s suggestion that Nassr found sexual gratification in his sexualized conversations while posing as a teenaged girl and also suggested that Nassr was “turned on” by his activities.

“It’s reprehensible that you would even try to call my own sexuality into question,” Nassr said. He became more angry, ultimately identifying the prosecutor’s child.

After the judge’s scolding, Nassr said he had “a mental disorder, so sometimes I don’t understand how the world around me perceives me.”

Nassr claimed he knew the name because he overheard the prosecutor talking about his child, but the prosecutor testified he doesn’t talk about his family at work and was particularly careful around Nassr.

The prosecutor’s fear was that Nassr would use the information to “dox” him, his child and the rest of his family.

Stribopoulos said the fear was well-founded and “(U)ndoubtedly, any lawyer would react similarly if a witness, somewhat gratuitously, in the heat of a combative cross-examination, stated that they knew the lawyer had a child and referred to their child by name.” he said.

Also, “any reasonable person in Mr. Nassr’s position would have appreciated making such a comment would be understood as menacing and instill a sense of fear in the lawyer questioning him.”

However, the judge said, he had to be sure that was the only inference he could draw, particularly because Nassr was cut off by the judge.

“For instance, he might have been planning to say, ‘I know that as a father of a young (child), you wouldn’t appreciate me suggesting that you enjoy sexting with pedophiles.’ However, it’s also possible that he intended to say something far more menacing,” Stribopoulos said.

“The challenge lies in the fact that regardless of how poorly conceived his comment many have been, I’m unsure that whatever Mr. Nassr ultimately planned to say was meant to instill fear.”

He also pointed out that Nasr kept veering off on tangents, and “I cannot be sure whether his interrupted comment about (the prosecutor’s child) was building towards something more sinister or far more innocuous.”

Also, during Nassr’s exchange with the trial judge, “Mr Nassr did not say anything …that his comment about (the prosecutor’s child) had some malevolent purpose or somehow crossed the line.

“That is consistent with Mr. Nassr believing that he was in the middle of making some relevant point … before he was interrupted.”

Stribopoulos said he was not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Nassr intended to scare or was trying to impede the prosecutor from doing his job and found Nassr not guilty.

jsims@postmedia.com