Carrie Low tells the assessment committee about her trauma at the NS police handling a rape case

A Halifax woman who says her 2018 rape case was mishandled told a police commission on Monday that she became suicidal because she felt officers mistrusted her.

Carrie Low first filed her complaint against the Halifax Regional Police and Const. Bojan Novakovic – the first cop to interview her – about a year after she reported being raped by at least two men in a trailer in East Preston, NS

Her testimony Monday before the Nova Scotia Police Review Board included accounts of how her clothing was not immediately collected and analyzed for DNA, and how no officer went to the scene to collect and secure evidence after the alleged rape.

Low said she underwent three interviews by detectives with an integrated RCMP-Halifax police assault unit and came to feel that officers did not believe her account of what happened.

“It was very hard,” she testified as she wiped away tears. “On the third interrogation I realized that the police probably didn’t believe me and it started to affect my mental health, which is why I tried to kill myself.”

Low told the three-person rating board that on the night of May 18, 2018, she was driven to a caravan in East Preston, NS, where she was raped as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

Low’s side of the story

She recalled being interviewed by Novakovic at the hospital the next day, after nurses trained in collecting rape test samples asked if Low wanted to talk to the officer. She said Novakovic gave her a plastic bag of evidence for her clothing and told her a police officer would contact her to retrieve it.

However, Low said when she called Novakovic the next day, he told her that because it was a long weekend, no one was available to pick up the bag of evidence. She said she also gave the officer the address of the caravan where she was allegedly raped, expecting someone to be sent to the scene.

During cross-examination, Novakovic’s attorney, Brian Bailey, told Low that it was not his client’s direct responsibility, as a patrol officer conducting an initial interview, to contact the RCMP-Halifax Police Unit for assault.

“I suppose that had nothing to do with my officer,” he said.

Low told the review board that a police chief told her months later that a duty officer should have called the assault team as soon as she got to the hospital.

She also said that Novakovic collected the bag of evidence from her 10 days later, on May 29, 2018, after she complained to a supervisor of the sexual assault investigation team about her treatment.

Fine appeal filed

Low said she learned from a police chief in April 2019 that no analysis had been done on her rape kit and her clothing, and no blood test for date-rape drugs had been sent to a lab. In addition, she was told by detectives on the case that no one had secured the crime scene.

The 47-year-old Halifax resident said she had become increasingly upset by the fall of 2018. “I was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder because my hair was falling out at the time,” she said.

Low’s police complaint, originally filed on May 13, 2019, was delayed after the Police Complaints Board said she failed to meet the six-month deadline to file a complaint, a decision overturned by the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia was destroyed.

The complaint process was further delayed by the criminal case against Alexander Thomas, who was murdered before he could stand trial for her assault, and by a trial against Brent Alexander Julien, who was acquitted in May.

Novakovic has been given a disciplinary sentence of eight hours of loss of wages, according to the internal report of a police commissioner. That sentence was challenged by Low and her lawyers, who took it to the Nova Scotia Police Review Board.

In addition, Low claimed there was a broader “pattern of behavior amounting to negligence” by the police. Her attorney, Jason Cooke, said after Monday’s hearing that the legal team is still considering appropriate disciplinary action against Novakovic.

Reform recommendations sought

Cooke said that in the case of the Halifax Police Department, Low and her legal team will seek recommendations for reforms to how the Integrated Sexual Assault Unit functions.

At the hearing, the review committee chair, Jean McKenna, said she still had to review previous legal decisions to decide whether the board could deal with a general complaint against the Halifax Police Department, rather than individual officers.