Sexual assault charges dropped after long-delayed Kamloops trial

A Kamloops man's sexual assault charges were dropped after his trial was delayed for months.

Jonathan Tait Steinkampf was facing a total of four sexual assault charges, but a Kamloops judge stayed his charges after his trial was delayed more than two-and-a-half years.

It was a last-minute Crown decision that delayed the trial for months, eventually landing in Judge Lorianna Bennett's courtroom where she stayed the charges on Oct. 27.

Prosecutors initially charged him with a single count of sexual assault, but later added three more just a day before a pre-trial conference in June 2022.

"Either there’s a typo below or we have a problem," Steinkampf's lawyer said in an email to the Crown the day his new charges were filed.

A newly-scheduled trial was supposed to start in September 2023, then rescheduled again for this month before it was cancelled altogether.

Justice Bennett said Crown prosecutors made a "tactical decision" without a plan to avoid any delays in the trial when the three assault charges were added.

All four alleged assaults had the same victim and Bennett's decision doesn't detail any of the circumstances. They were alleged to have occurred within a three-year span from January 2018 to January 2021.

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