Restaurateur says he was ruined by human-trafficking allegations

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It is no secret that this country has a propensity to spring killers, sex offenders and other miscreants with woke-eyed abandon.

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A blind eye is frequently turned depending on political expediency (see protests). Bail is spooned out like seafood chowder.

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But sometimes the wrong guy gets accused and finds himself against the state’s staggering — and frequently stupid — might.

Everol Powell is one of those people.

The 54-year-old Jamaican immigrant opened a popular Caribbean-themed restaurant, the Boathouse, in the Kawartha Lakes area, where it was a favourite of cottagers and locals alike. Powell was living his Canadian dream.

Sometimes he hired international workers from Jamaica to staff the joint.

That might have been his first mistake.

“I was pulled over by the cops in 2014, completely out of the blue,” he told the Toronto Sun. “It was for human trafficking.”

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The charge still stings. Powell said several of the Boathouse workers had run off.

“Officers told me they had received a 911 call from someone, who was anonymous. They said, ‘Everol is paying girls to have sex,’” he recalled, adding that he owned two restaurants at the time. “It wasn’t remotely true. But I had nothing but my good name and good word.”

Whispers move like the wind in smaller burgs. Powell said he never had problems with the local police, knowing many by name and often serving them free coffee and conversation in the morning.

But the OPP was a different matter. The provincial cops carried out three search warrants and he was locked up. And when he was out on bail? Cops followed him constantly.

And then he was hit with 17 human-trafficking charges.

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That makes the news in small towns.

Powell alleges that the OPP wanted to nail him so badly, his restaurant was wired.

His businesses began taking a nosedive after he was sullied with the charges. They would never financially recover and both would eventually be shuttered.

On Feb. 14, 2014. The charges were muted. The pain, anger and outrage continues.

“They assassinated my character, my integrity, they ruined my livelihood. My first lawyer tried to get me to wave my rights, to plead guilty to a misdemeanour charge … I told him, ‘I can’t do that.’ And he told me it wouldn’t affect my chances of suing the police,” Powell said.

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He said he went through five lawyers, each wanting him to plead to the lower charge. Powell described the whole affair as a “malicious prosecution.”

The father of three has not worked since 2018. Legal fees cost him everything he had, his assets and his savings.

Powell had wanted to sue local police, the OPP, Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP.

That didn’t happen because he claims his civil litigators did not file the suit within the two-year time limit allowed. Powell alleges he was misled.

“Everol was sold down the river by his lawyers,” said his current lawyer, Osbourne Barnwell. “It’s not a matter of Monday morning quarterbacking or hindsight being 20/20.”

Barnwell alleged that Powell has shelled out to lawyers more than $70,000 and “from a man who had nothing left.”

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The lawyer said that following the two-year statute of limitations had passed – when any case against the cops was moot – Rogerson Law Group still took the case.

“Cops saw him as a culprit and didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. It is simply wrong,” Barnwell said.

In their statement of defence, Andrew Rogerson and the Rogerson Law Group said that Powell told them “that he understood” that unless there was a formal retainer “no steps would be taken to protect his interest.”

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The Rogerson firm also said that Powell was cautioned there was a “material risk” that the courts may not let him proceed with his lawsuit against the cops and that timing was an issue.

They have denied any wrongdoing.

Eventually, he paid a $10,000 retainer. But his current lawyer claims Powell should have been told the statute of limitations had passed and there was an absence of merit in his case.

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Powell claims the Rogerson firm held themselves out as civil litigators with knowledge of that area of law.

The lawsuit claims that the firm “failed to meet the basic standards of a civil litigator” and caused Powell grave financial, familial and social hardship.

The statement of defence suggested the restaurateur was gung-ho about charging ahead with the suit. Powell said he would have been “blindingly foolish” to charge ahead if he had known the difficulties.

Powell had been charged with seven counts of human trafficking along with seven counts of material benefit from a criminal offence. He would receive an absolute discharge.

His criminal lawyer claims in his statement of defence that he got the charges downgraded. He added that he reminded Powell of limitation periods.

Rogerson said that by March 2020, Powell could no longer afford to retain the firm’s defendants and had fallen into arrears.

The firm added: “At all times discharged their duties in his best interest.”

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X: @HunterTOSun

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