Crown withdraws sex offender registry charge against ex-Bridgewater police chief Collyer
The Crown has dropped a Sex Offender Information Registration Act charge against John Collyer, convicted in 2020 of sexually exploiting a teenage girl.
Crown withdraws registry charge against former Nova Scotia police chief
The Crown has dropped a charge against John Collyer — the former Bridgewater, N.S., police chief convicted in 2020 of sexually exploiting a 17-year-old girl — for allegedly failing to comply with an order under the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, globalnews.ca reports.
Collyer had been charged under the act in September 2025 and was scheduled to stand trial this week in a provincial court in Bridgewater, the same community where he once served as police chief.
On Monday, Crown prosecutor Hannah Cameron told Judge James Burrill that the charge was being withdrawn on the grounds that there was no public interest in proceeding. She offered no further explanation. Burrill dismissed the charge. What specifically Collyer was accused of in 2025 remains unclear; the section of the Criminal Code cited in court documents provides little detail.
Background: the 2020 conviction
On March 4, 2020, Collyer was sentenced to 15 months in jail after being found guilty of sexually exploiting a teenager while serving as deputy chief of the Bridgewater Police Service. He also received one year of probation, and his DNA profile was ordered added to the national sex offender registry for 20 years.
At trial, the victim told the court that the senior officer had been like a father figure to her and her mother after they relocated to Nova Scotia and needed support. She was 12 years old when they first met. By the time she turned 15, she said, Collyer himself admitted he could not trust himself around her.
A psychiatrist who testified during the trial stated that at the time of the offence, the girl had an intellectual and emotional age between 10 and 12 years old. The court also heard that the girl's mother provided investigators with screenshots of sexually suggestive online messages Collyer had sent to the teenager. Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Mona Lynch concluded that those messages were intended to groom the girl for sexual contact.
The victim, whose identity is protected by a standard publication ban, told investigators that in the spring of 2016, while the two were driving in Collyer's car, he reached between her legs and sexually assaulted her. She stated she did not give her consent.
Collyer, a 26-year veteran of the police force, was originally charged in May 2017 with sexual assault and two counts of sexual exploitation; one exploitation count was later withdrawn. He stood trial on one count of sexual assault and one of sexual exploitation. Justice Lynch found him guilty of both offences but entered a conditional stay on the sexual assault conviction, citing the legal principle that an accused cannot be convicted of two offences arising from the same conduct.
Collyer was granted full parole in August 2020.
Source: Google News CA — Crime (EN)