Bowie is standing trial on charges of harassment, extortion and two counts of uttering threats to a former client.
Embattled Ottawa lawyer James Bowie’s criminal trial continued this week, with a former friend testifying she watched the man “descend into madness” in late 2022 and early 2023, going so far as to ask for a gun to “take care of” a former client who accused him of soliciting sex in exchange for legal services.
Bowie is standing trial on charges of harassment, extortion and two counts of uttering threats to Leanne Aubin, a former client. His criminal trial was adjourned after sitting for one day in late September and resumed on Jan. 28.
Bowie has pleaded not guilty to harassing the witness, whose identity is shielded by a publication ban. The first person to testify in the criminal trial, she said she met Bowie in 2020 on a dating app, and the two maintained a friendship while Bowie was facing Aubin’s allegations and an investigation from the Law Society of Ontario.
Bowie asked the witness to surveil Aubin in order to prove her complaints were false, she testified in a judge-alone trial before Justice Paul Cooper.
“I watched somebody I’d be happy to call my friend at one point, go to someone I didn’t recognize. Someone who scared me,” she said. “It was like watching a descent into madness, but from a distance.”
She said she kept a friendship with him because she was worried about him.
Bowie, she said, was “preoccupied” with Aubin’s accusations, was paranoid and was convinced he was being surveilled. He attempted to recruit the witness to surveil Aubin, and to get Aubin to confess on tape to falsifying her complaints, she testified. The witness denied helping Bowie “gather intelligence” about Aubin to prove her allegations were false.
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Bowie’s lawyer, Eric Granger, asked her if she had met Aubin’s lawyer at a party, if she planned on getting a job near Aubin in an attempt to befriend her or planned to attend a party Aubin would be at. The woman denied all of these suggestions, saying she never did anything to help Bowie.
“You went out to gather intelligence for him, about the people who complained?” Granger asked.
“No, sir,” she responded.
“So there was never a time you undertook these activities to help Mr. Bowie?” he asked.
“No, sir,” she said.
The woman testified Bowie brought up guns, sometimes in the context of suicide, but other times asking if she knew how to procure one, indicating Aubin needed to “go away” or “be taken care of.”
“When you’re asking about firearms, saying you need your problem gone, you need it taken care of, you need her out of the picture, even though you’re not explicitly saying the kill word, it’s safe to assume that is what he’s talking about,” she said.
The friendship between Bowie and the woman cooled in February 2023, when the woman lost her work permit and was facing immigration issues. At the time, Bowie had offered to “pimp her out,” saying, “I already have people who will f*** you. I know you’re vulnerable, let me help you and you’ll help me,” she testified.
“Friends don’t say that to friends, regardless of the situation you’re in,” she said, adding Bowie was “trying to make me stoop down to his level of insanity.”
After that, the woman avoided Bowie’s texts and calls, but some weeks later the two crossed paths in a supermarket parking lot and Bowie confronted her for “ghosting” him. Later that day, she found an AirTag tracker in the wheel well of her car that she believed Bowie had placed there.
She said after that, she was convinced Bowie would hurt her, and she went to police. Granger suggested the woman “exaggerated” her claims to police, “to get him to go away,” but she denied this, saying ignoring him seemed to “escalate” his behaviour and she was worried he would harm her.
“I’m using his words to convey to police that he’s a dangerous man, he’s unhinged, he has everything to lose,” she said.
A civil trial on the same matter ordered Bowie to pay more than $200,000 to Aubin, but this is the first time the claims have been tested in a criminal trial.
Superior Court Justice Heather Williams said in her Oct. 11 decision that Bowie waged a “campaign to exploit the circumstances of this vulnerable young client for his own gratification” and disclosed her identity and confidential personal details in a social media chat.
What’s more, last week, the Law Society of Ontario levied more accusations of misconduct against Bowie, saying he sexually harassed four people, two of whom were clients, between 2018 and 2021.
In the Jan. 16 filing, the Law Society Tribunal alleged Bowie “failed to conduct himself with integrity” by sexually harassing two clients and two other unnamed complainants.
According to the LSO allegations, Bowie was accused of “sending communications containing unwelcome sexual advances; making requests for sexual favours in exchange for legal services; and/or engaging in other verbal, written or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”
Bowie’s criminal trial continues.
With files from Aedan Helmer
