I am assuming this is the date. When I was unable to find anything more specific on either the regular Internet or in NewsBank, I put in a freedom of information request to Toronto Police.
This was answered in double quick time by Jenifferjit Sidhu of their Media Relations department. Her verbatim response was:
There is an occurrence for the 1987 case ‐ Offence Date 1987.12.10, Occurrence #1987.164233 ‐ there is just no file. It seems that a number of files from the time (when things were being converted to microfiche from paper) have gone missing and this seems to be one of those files as it can not be located anywhere.
Whatever, according to THE SATURDAY STAR, October 14, 1989, page A19:
“A woman who claimed two men dragged her into High Park and raped her for four hours has pleaded guilty to charges of public mischief”. See below.
Public mischief is the usual charge in Canada; in the UK this would be wasting police time or the more serious perverting the course of justice.
As can be seen, the same article says that three days later she admitted these two heavy sex attackers did not exist, probably because there were people around who would have noticed, but what it does not say is that she then went on to accuse Kenneth Sylvia of raping her in an apartment, and the poor bloke stood trial for it.
He was acquitted on June 29, 1989 after she admitted the lie, and was then charged herself.
In 1996, she hit the headlines big time for a different type of false report, and her lies were even reported in Parliament, see page 11 of this PDF document. It includes this wonderful quote from Senator Cools:
I am always amazed at the seeming ease with which certain female persons perpetrate deceit on the justice system and the readiness of the system to yield to such deceit.
Before any of you cry misogyny, run that name through your search engine.
The article below gives more background to Mercier’s later scam. Although she didn’t really have a son, she’d had a hard life, had apparently been homeless at one point, and she was in fact ill.
Don’t feel too sorry for her though. On April 12, 1996, a Toronto Sun article by Thane Burnett quoted Sylvia who said what she put him through had had a horrifying impact on his family, his business, and his health. At one point, he was attacked and beaten by three men.
Donna Glenda Mercier died at Medicine Hat on April 2, 2017 aged just 48.
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