 Above: Patricia Marshall (r) with daughters Courtney (left) and Lindsay at Queens Park for answers to why a peeping tom was set free, Wednesday, September 23, 2009. Below: James Cedar is caught on a surveillance camera installed at the St. Catharines home of Patricia Marshall. (Michael Peake/QMI Agency)
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“Good fences make good neighbours.”
— Robert Frost
A year ago yesterday, the Crown prosecutor in St. Catharines quietly dropped all charges against James Cedar, whose Peeping Tom antics had been caught on video as he crept into his neighbours’ backyard, peered into the windows, and pleasured himself as the tape rolled on.
What should have been a good day for the then 18-year-old Cedar, with the prospect of an embarrassing trial on criminal harassment charges now in his rear-view mirror, turned into one of the worst.
He had peeped into the wrong neighbours’ window and Patricia Marshall, mother of two then-teenaged daughters, was not about to let the matter lie — especially when Niagara North Crown prosecutor Wally Essert had not warned her, or the investigating police, that the charges would be dropped.
So she went public.
She handed over the video of Cedar’s actions to CHCH in Hamilton. She gave it to this newspaper, which published the incriminating video online, and followed up with a number of columns as the story evolved.
Later, it made its way to CTV as the story, and the video, went viral.
And it ended up at Queen’s Park — with the Tory opposition posing question after question to Attorney General Chris Bentley during Question Period, demanding to know why the Crown had punted the case, and why new charges against Cedar were not being laid?
But no true answers were ever given.
Repeated tracks in the snow had provided Patricia Marshall with the initial clues that something was amiss in her backyard and, within 24 hours of installing a camera under her back porch, she had slam-dunk evidence that her privacy, and her children’s privacy, had been invaded by their next-door neighbour’s son.
That’s how it all began.
It ended, however, only a few days ago when Patricia Marshall was informed by Niagara Regional Police that, despite it all — despite all the conflab at Queen’s Park, and despite the review that quietly came out of the Crown’s office — there would be no going back.
James Cedar would not be recharged.
Between now, and the story first going public, however, the case has had more twists and turns than a snake in a rockpile.
James Cedar, who confessed to police to frequent forays into his neighbours’ backyard, still lives next door to the Marshalls.
On Thanksgiving Monday of last year, a techie showed up at his house and hard-wired it with at least two night-vision cameras.
One pointed directly at the bedroom window of Patricia Marshall’s 19-year-old daughter, Courtney. Another, wired to the Cedars’ porch, has its aim towards the Marshall family’s living room.
Patricia Marshall saw it as tit-for-tat intimidation.
“If I felt like I was in a prison before the cameras went up, I feel more like being in prison now,” Marshall said at the time.
“Our blinds and our drapes, by necessity, are now closed tight 24/7.
“We’re trapped in a nightmare.”
A call to the Cedar home to explain why these cameras were installed, and why they are pointed where they were pointed, went unreturned — as have all previous calls to the residence.
According to a Niagara Regional Police media spokesman at the time, the installation of those cameras would be investigated by police as part of a “neighbour dispute”.
There was no elaboration.
Not long before that, to add insult to injury, the Cedars hired Niagara Falls lawyer Margaret Hoy, who Marshall had once contacted for assistance but received no reply, and had her fire off a letter to the Marshalls about their camera being an invasion of their privacy.
It read as follows:
“Please be advised that I am the solicitor for James Cedar,” the letter began. “It has come to my attention that you have installed surveillance cameras which photograph and videotape into my client’s yard and windows.
“Further, it appears that you have contacted various media, including CHCH-TV and some newspapers.
“My client has constitutionally protected privacy rights as do all Canadians and such conduct by you is contrary to Mr. Cedar’s rights of privacy and security,” wrote Hoy.
And then came the kicker.
“In the event that these rights are violated further,” Hoy warns, “I have strict instructions to take further action.”
As of today, at the orders of police, the camera the Cedars had pointing directly at the bedroom window of Patricia Marshall’s daughter, Courtney, has been taken down.
The Marshalls have now put up a two-metre-high wooden privacy fence, first promised by the Cedars as part of their son's release. The fence now separates the Cedars’s walkway from that same bedroom window.
Good fences do not always make good neighbours.
But they sometimes help.
mark.bonokoski@sunmedia.ca
or 416-947-2445
