Editor’s note: This article refers to alleged incidents of sexual assault and other offences, which readers may find disturbing.
One by one, they found each other with anonymous Instagram messages, tense coffee shop meetings, and mutual terror over what might happen if they spoke out.
In testimony on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, at the judge-only trial of Michael Haaima before Justice Robyn Ryan Bell, a Crown witness described how a loose network of young women gradually connected behind the scenes years before police formally contacted some of them — comparing experiences, warning one another, and eventually helping investigators piece together what the witness repeatedly called “the puzzle.”
The woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, testified in Kingston Superior Court that she first became connected to the others in February 2020 after receiving an unexpected Instagram message from a woman she did not know.
“You don’t know me,” the message began, according to screenshots entered as exhibits at trial, “but I’d like to talk to you about someone that we mutually know.”
The sender explained that she was “currently filing a police report” against the accused and wanted to discuss the witness’s relationship with him. The sender was a witness who previously testified in the trial that she was trying to protect other women and girls from Haaima, but did not think the police were taking her seriously, as it was her word against Haaima’s.
At the time, the current witness testified, she had no idea who was contacting her, and the messages “spooked” her because the sender appeared to know intimate details about her life while remaining effectively anonymous.
After further exchanges, it became clear the messages concerned Haaima — and that the woman contacting her appeared to know details about both her and the accused.
“I know things,” the woman wrote in one message entered as an exhibit. “He told me about you while he and I were seeing each other.”
The witness also testified that learning the messages involved Haaima triggered an immediate sense of dread.
“It was a feeling of, ‘Oh no,’” she told the court, explaining she had been attempting to move on with her life after her earlier interactions with the accused.
The woman who contacted her — whose identity is also protected by a publication ban — eventually revealed she had already gone to police and was attempting to gather others who might also come forward.
The woman then asked whether they could speak in person or by phone, adding, “This stuff is bad.”
Asked how she felt hearing that Haaima had discussed her with another woman, the witness testified, “It was a shock.” She said she had realized during her time knowing Haaima that “something was going on behind the scenes,” but did not yet understand the scope of it.
The exchange between the two women then shifted to the subject of age, with the witness asking the messenger how old she was.
Crown counsel asked what had motivated the question, and the witness explained, “Due to what the accused had shown me, it obviously ran through my mind on the urgency to ask how old this person was that I’m speaking to.”
Earlier this week, she testified that Haaima had shown her child porn and asked her to lure a girl from a school for him. She told the Crown she was worried the sender “could have been possibly underage.”
As the two women continued messaging, the witness said she gradually realized they shared several overlapping concerns and experiences involving Haaima.
The witness also told the court that, during her earlier interactions with Haaima, he had at one point suggested she “meet someone.”
Years later, after receiving the anonymous Instagram messages, she wondered whether he had been referring to the woman now contacting her.
In messages entered as exhibits on Tuesday, the witness had written, “He mentioned he wanted me to meet someone, and I’m wondering if it was you?”
Asked about the exchange in court, the witness testified that Haaima wanted to introduce third parties into their sexual encounters, but she “wasn’t interested in meeting other people” and “had zero interest in that whatsoever.”
The two complainants ultimately agreed to meet in person over coffee at a restaurant in Kingston.
The witness testified she arrived first and spent the wait “profusely sweating,” fearing she may have been lured into some kind of setup.
“I thought, you know, somebody’s gonna come find me,” she testified.
When the other woman finally arrived, the witness said the similarities between them were profound and unsettling.
“We both had dark brown hair. We were around the same height. We kind of had similar demeanours,” she testified, adding the two women had even dressed similarly that day.
The likenesses only deepened the witness’s sense that something larger was unfolding around her.
“It was just another ‘what the fuck’ moment,” she testified, adding that “this was just the beginning of it unravelling.”
During the roughly 20- to 30-minute meeting, the witness testified, the other woman explained she had already attempted to go to police once before, but felt her earlier attempt had not succeeded nor been taken seriously.
“She wanted to see how many people she could gather up in the very beginning to see who would come forward with her,” the witness testified.
Despite her own fears, the witness told the court she admired the other woman’s willingness to act.
“I was really proud of her, that she was able to have the bravery to go forward,” she testified.
Still, she said, she remained deeply hesitant about involving herself further. The witness repeatedly described fearing for both her own safety and her family’s safety if she became publicly connected to the allegations.
“I didn’t know what type of lifestyle [Haaima] was living,” she testified. “I didn’t know what connections he had.”
At one point, she told the court, she instructed her roommates to become concerned if she did not return home within an hour of a meeting with the other woman.
Over the months that followed, the two women drifted mostly out of contact.
Eventually, the witness testified, she became convinced something terrible might have happened. After messages to the other woman repeatedly went unanswered, the witness said she began fearing the woman had disappeared or been harmed by Haaima.
“I spiralled into this thought of, like, ‘Oh my gosh, [she] is missing,’” she testified.
Attempting to track the other woman down, the witness began searching through Instagram “mutuals” — accounts followed by both women — eventually contacting another woman who also knew the accused.
That woman, yet another witness in the trial and whose identification is protected by a publication ban, confirmed she had concerns and that she too had previously gone to the police regarding Haaima.
The witness testified that the conversations intensified her fears while simultaneously reinforcing her belief that multiple women were independently raising similar concerns.
“We just wanted to have an idea of where [she] was in case something had happened to her,” the witness testified.
Eventually, the witness learned the original woman was safe.
Years later, in May 2022, the witness received an unexpected phone call from Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Detective Tracy Tucker.
Initially believing the detective was contacting her about an unrelated incident, the witness testified she was shocked when Tucker instead asked about Haaima.
By then, another woman had already provided police with the witness’s name.
In Instagram messages read to the court on Tuesday, another woman informed the witness she had shared her information with investigators because “he’s finally getting justice.”
Asked how she felt about learning that her name had been given to the police, the witness acknowledged it was stressful, but said she understood why it happened.
“Things needed to be said,” she told the court.
The witness ultimately agreed to provide a statement to investigators, describing herself as simply another “piece of the puzzle.”
Throughout much of Tuesday’s evidence, the Crown’s focus appeared to be not so much highlighting any single allegation as illustrating how multiple women — many of whom initially distrusted one another and feared coming forward — gradually became aware of their overlapping experiences through private messages, social media connections, and mounting concerns long before some formally cooperated with police.
As the trial continues, Kingstonist will provide further coverage.
By Michelle Dorey Forestell, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on May 29, 2026 at 08:08
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