Shuswap dentist pleads guilty to sending harassing messages, breaching court order

A Shuswap dentist who sent his ex-wife dozens of harassing emails has pleaded guilty to disobeying a court order.

On June 29, at the Salmon Arm courthouse, Robert Douglas Johnson managed to avoid getting a criminal record and instead was granted a conditional discharge and sentenced to 18 months probation. Provided he adheres to the conditions of that probation, Johnson won’t get a criminal record.

The Salmon Arm dentist was also due to stand trial on three charges of disobeying a court order next month, but had the trial cancelled after discussions with Crown prosecutors.

Details of the discussions aren’t known, but it appears the other charges were dropped as part of a plea deal.

The dentist’s result is a far cry from the beginning of the court proceedings, where Johnson refused to identify himself and refused to enter a plea. 

Crown prosecutor Danika Heighes told the court it appeared that Johnson was intent on using pseudo-legal arguments, which provincial court Judge George Leven quickly shot down.

However, the dentist appears to have had a change of heart and, by the afternoon, entered the guilty plea.

Johnson, who once ran as a Libertarian Party candidate, is embroiled in a bitter divorce case which has already seen him fined $100,000 and jailed for 45 days for contempt of court.

In February, a BC judge said he engaged in an “unprecedented campaign of threats and harassment” against his wife and her new partner, describing it as a “relentless and multi-pronged attack” which included “manipulation, belittlement, and physical threats of harm.”

Earlier this month, Johnson was sentenced to spend 15 weekends in jail, having been found in contempt of court over his social media posts that were “abusive and demeaning” and often contained “thinly veiled malice.”

He called the judge who granted the divorce “evil” and “corrupt” and said that she needed to be “dealt with accordingly.”

Outside of his civil family case, Johnson was then charged criminally for disobeying a court order.

His former partner told the court she had applied for a protection order from the courts because Johnson had continued to breach conduct orders in his “hundreds and hundreds” of posts.

“There were dozens of inappropriate, harassing emails that were being sent to me,” she told the court. “He was showing up at the kids’ school and causing them some stress, and when I asked, ‘Can you stop doing that, they’re uncomfortable with it, the reply was, ‘No,’ he wanted to do whatever he wanted to do.”

She asked Johnson to “respect basic decency,” she told the court.

In his defence, Johnson said the court order was a “fraudulent order based on perjury.”

However, Judge Leven said the issue was breaching the court order and not the court order itself. The judge questioned why, if Johnson didn’t agree with the order, he didn’t apply to vary it?

The dentist said he didn’t want to pay a lawyer $10,000.

But Leven said that was a flimsy excuse, saying many self-represented litigants apply to set aside orders.

“In fact, I’ve set many of these aside where I found that they were improperly granted. But you haven’t done that, so what you’re doing now is a collateral attack on the order,” the judge said.

Judge Leven reiterated the proceedings weren’t about the conditions of the court order.

“So then I have nothing to say,” Johnson replied.