Terror hoaxster freed despite Ontario hospital's view he poses a 'significant threat'

An Ontario man who vanished for three years after being found not criminally responsible for calling the German consulate in Toronto in December 2016 to say a terrorist attack was going to take place that coming weekend in Berlin has been released even though the hospital where he was being treated says he represents a significant threat to the public.

The Ontario Review Board ordered Stephen Clements’ detention at the Southwest Centre for Forensic Mental Health Care in April 2022, where he was to live in approved accommodations in the community. But several weeks later, when hospital staffers tried to contact him, they discovered that he was no longer there, had quit his job and sold his cell phone. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but it wasn’t until this past April that police caught up with Clements after they fielded a call from the Sarnia Public Library complaining he was harassing a staffer there.

The review board conducted a hearing last month where it sought input from the same hospital that ordered Clements’ detention in 2022.

”It was the hospital’s position that Mr. Clements continued to represent a significant threat to the safety of the public and that the necessary and appropriate disposition was a continuation of the current detention order,” minus the parts that allowed Clements to live in the community, according to a recent decision from the review board.

Doctors weren’t alone in their concerns, according to the decision. “Counsel for the attorney general supported the hospital position.”

Despite opinions from medical professionals and the ministry responsible for administering the justice system, the board set Clements free.

“In our view the evidence is at best speculative with respect to a potential for serious harm as a result of conduct criminal in nature,” it said in a decision dated Aug. 12. “The board finds that the evidence does not support a conclusion that Mr. Clements represents a significant threat to the safety of the public and accordingly is entitled to be discharged absolutely. Although it may well be in Mr. Clements’ best interest to engage with mental health professionals to clarify a potential mental health diagnosis, that is not the test we are required to apply.”

The decision comes as Canada grapples with the wider issue of how we manage people found not criminally responsible and whether they are being released to the public too soon.

For his part, “Clements indicated that in his view there was no evidence to establish that he constituted a significant threat to the safety of the public and that he was accordingly entitled to be discharged absolutely.”

The five-person panel deciding his fate heard that in February 2019 Clements was found not criminally responsible on charges of making a terrorism hoax and obstructing police.

When he contacted the German consulate in Toronto Dec. 16, 2016, warning of an imminent terror attack in Berlin, “Clements said that he was acting as a facilitator, as he had received this information from a member of a terrorist cell who wanted out,” said the review board decision.

When the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, Canada’s counter-terrorism outfit, contacted him on Dec. 17, 2016, he “did not seem very coherent” and declined to provide any information about the alleged terrorist hoax. They arrested him.

“On Dec. 19, 2016, while Mr. Clements was in remand custody, a terrorist attack occurred in Berlin causing 12 deaths and dozens of injuries (approximately 50),” said the review board decision.

“A search of Mr. Clements phone and email account on the same day did not show any evidence of foreign communications that would indicate knowledge of the terrorist attack in Berlin.”

When Mounties interviewed him three days later, Clements “advised that a ‘higher power’ had told him about the attacks. He endorsed hearing voices that only he could hear. Both Jesus Christ and the devil spoke to him. He heard the voices first approximately one week before he contacted the consulate,” said the decision.

The decision notes his “current diagnosis is schizophrenia spectrum disorder.”

The psychiatrist who treated Clements just before last month’s hearing pointed to a hospital report that referred to his “history of violence” as well as the seriousness of the terrorism hoax. “He noted that Mr. Clements ‘likely’ suffers from a major mental disorder but the diagnosis has not yet been clarified. He advises that Mr. Clements has no insight into the need for treatment for future risk of violence although on a day-to-day basis he does well.”

A former director of the Rivercity Vineyard Church and Community Centre in Sarnia, which runs a shelter, indicated Clements had been actively involved there as both a volunteer and in a paid position for years. She “described no mental health or management concerns whatsoever concerning Mr. Clements. To the contrary, she described him as an ‘amazing worker’ with a ‘great heart.’”

She called Clements a “puppy dog,” explaining that that he “has been stable for the entirety of the time he has been at the shelter. He has his own private room and there is no limit on how long he may occupy that room so long as he continues to help at the shelter.”

The review board heard that since he was arrested and hospitalized in April, Clements “has been pleasant and sociable with staff and peers. His thoughts were clear and organized” and his “behaviour was not ‘obviously bizarre.’”

Clements testified that “since no one contacted him after the board hearing in April 2022 he thought the matter was concluded,” said the decision, which notes he then went to Halifax for more than a year before returning to Sarnia.

The review board didn’t buy his story about not knowing he had been ordered detained by the hospital. “The only reasonable inference to be drawn is that Mr. Clements was aware of the disposition but was refusing to be bound by it.”

It examined Clements’ “serious history of mental health and substance abuse issues, his lengthy criminal record, including assault, break and enter, and failures to comply, his (previously) paranoid and aggressive behaviour while in detention at the respondent facility, his resistance to treatment, including medications, his moderate to high risk scores on risk assessment tests, his breach of hospital rules, including attempting to abscond, and his lack of insight into the index offence, his condition and his need for treatment.”

It also accepted his psychiatrist’s opinion that Clements “posed a significant threat to public safety based on these factors.”

But board members had “serious concerns” about the conclusion that Clements has a “history of violence.”

“Although there is no doubt that the index offence was extremely serious with a potential for at a minimum serious psychological harm to individuals, there is little outside of that to support a finding that Mr. Clements has a ‘history of violence’ which significantly undermines the opinion of the hospital with respect to significant threat.”

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