The Camera Was There for Months; the Charges Never Came

There is a particular kind of cold that arrives when you realize you have been watched without your knowledge, when the private space you trusted has been quietly violated. Kelly Stewart felt that cold in October 2018, standing in her dorm room at the Royal Military College of Canada.

She was plugging in her phone, planning to let it charge while she went to class, when she noticed a cord she didn’t recognize. She traced it to a web camera hidden inside the heater in her wall. “My whole body just went completely cold,” she said .

Stewart reported the discovery immediately. Military police launched an investigation into voyeurism and breaking and entering. The National Investigation Service took over the following day. Documents obtained through Access to Information show the investigation was formally closed in August 2020 because it did not yield enough evidence to substantiate the elements of the offence. No charges were ever laid .

Stewart, now 28, believes the investigation was flawed. The 335-page police report, heavily redacted, shows that it took a month to access surveillance footage from the hallway outside her room, and more than four months to seize the suspect’s laptop . A “person of interest” is listed, but all information about them is redacted. Stewart said a staff member later told her that her superiors knew the suspect was living a few doors down from her—and that the staff member had been instructed not to tell her .

She asked to have the suspect moved. She was told that wasn’t possible—that she could move instead. She described spending months avoiding the cafeteria and classrooms, afraid of running into him. She lost weight. Her health deteriorated. In September 2019, she was granted a voluntary release on compassionate grounds .

Eight years later, Stewart is speaking publicly for the first time. In a social media post, she wrote: “For 8 years I have carried the weight of other people’s disgusting actions, failures and systemic sexism. I owe it to my 20-year-old self to pass that weight off to the men who failed” .

She has filed a formal complaint with the Military Police Complaints Commission about the investigating officer. The Department of National Defence confirmed it is aware of the claims but declined to comment on identifiable individuals. A spokesperson said two of the four people Stewart named have since retired .

The case arrives amid renewed attention to sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, following allegations at Cornell University that prompted a federal review. For Stewart, the decision to speak now is not about the past. It is about the weight she has carried for eight years and the system that, she says, failed to carry it with her.

AI Image Disclaimer: This article’s image is AI-generated and does not depict the actual individuals or dormitory involved.

Sources: CBC News, VanPeople, Today in Canada, Flipboard