Former Edmonton police employee Yasin Cetin acquitted of child sex assault

Yasin Cetin, a former civilian EPS employee, was found not guilty of luring and sexually assaulting a teenage boy after two trials.

Acquittal after two trials: Edmonton police employee cleared of sex assault charges

A former civilian employee of the Edmonton Police Service has been found not guilty of child luring and sexual assault following two trials — the first of which collapsed after the Crown prosecutor abandoned his own theory of the case.

Court of King's Bench Justice Kent Teskey delivered the verdict on Thursday, acquitting 34-year-old Yasin Cetin, who had worked in the EPS's equity and inclusion branch. Cetin had been charged in connection with the alleged sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy in December 2023, according to edmontonjournal.com.

In a rare directed verdict — meaning the defence did not present its own case — Teskey ruled the Crown had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Cetin was the man who sexually abused the teen. The judge also identified significant problems with the police investigation itself.

A case built on contested identification

The case centred on a youth living in a group home who alleged he was sexually abused by a man he had met online. The two arranged to meet and engaged in sex acts in a vehicle in early December 2023. During the encounter, the teen recorded a video of the suspect.

Crown prosecutor David Gault argued there was strong circumstantial evidence pointing to Cetin. A selfie found on one of the youth's devices appeared to show the accused. The suspect had also told the teen he was 31 — Cetin's age at the time — and claimed to live near the teen's former foster home, close to a property Cetin owns. A phone seized from Cetin also had access to an email address similar to a Snapchat handle used to communicate with the victim.

Teskey, however, found those links did not hold up. At most, he said, the Crown had shown some evidence that Cetin may have messaged the teen from a particular account — but that account differed from the one used to arrange the meeting and contained no sexual content.

The video recorded during the encounter was too poor in quality to establish the identity of the suspect, the judge concluded. A still image from that footage, partially showing the suspect's face, was brightened and run through facial recognition software cross-referenced against multiple photo databases, including images of Cetin. It returned no match.

Teskey reserved his sharpest criticism for a photo identification procedure in which investigators showed the teen a single photograph of a man they believed was the suspect. "It carries every danger that the photo lineup process is designed to avoid," the judge said.

Defence: mistaken identity and a damaging prosecution

Defence lawyer Zachary Al-Khatib had asked for the directed verdict, arguing the Crown had not proven the suspect's identity to the required standard. He said Cetin also had an alibi for the night in question — receipts, group chat messages and photographs showing he was at a dinner with friends when the alleged offences occurred.

Al-Khatib acknowledged police had found a selfie that appeared to show Cetin on the teen's computer, but argued there was no evidence it had not been taken from a public social media profile.

"I think what we have here is a demonstration of the risks of human confirmation bias and error when it comes to identification cases," Al-Khatib said, describing the matter as one of "mistaken identity."

Cetin's first trial, also prosecuted by Gault, collapsed in May after two days of evidence. Gault told the court at the time that he had received new information leading him to conclude Cetin was not behind the Snapchat accounts central to the case, and requested a mistrial. Al-Khatib said the mistrial was declared after he shared the alibi information, which prompted the Crown to seek a second trial with a different alleged offence date.

"Devastating" consequences for Cetin

Al-Khatib said Cetin is relieved by the acquittal but remains "disappointed" that the Crown chose to prosecute what the defence characterised as a problematic case — not once, but twice.

Cetin, he said, is still working to rebuild his life following the very public accusation, which included a police media release accompanied by his photograph.

"The consequences of this prosecution have been devastating for my client," Al-Khatib said. "I think getting an acquittal in court is the first step towards rebuilding his life, but it's far from the last."

Source: Google News CA — Crime (EN)