On the stand last week, Michael Haaima’s former fiancée described a relationship marked by her well-intentioned trust and his pattern of concealment and manipulation that allegedly allowed him to assault two placement students as she slept nearby.
Justice Robin Ryan Bell is presiding over the “mega trial” of Michael Haaima at the Frontenac County Court House. In this judge-only trial, Haaima is facing 98 separate charges against 28 complainants, including multiple violent sex assaults and involving child pornography, among other despicable crimes.
The trial continued on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. Having established earlier that Haaima and the woman he was engaged to began an abstinent relationship after the two began attending therapy for what the witness described as Haaima’s sex addiction, assistant Crown attorney Megan Williams asked the woman a series of questions about students who were on placement and worked at Ferus Media.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Though her answers showed the witness knew very little about what was going on in her house, they confirmed many of the details former employees have shared about the workplace layout: for example, that during the time they lived at the residence, the office space at the west end Kingston home they shared moved from a bedroom upstairs to the basement.
Williams also established the existence of two safes in the home: a smaller fireproof safe, and another large long-gun safe. Previous witnesses have testified that Haaima kept illegal drugs and external hard drives in these safes. It is alleged that the external hard drives contained explicit videos of at least one woman — – videos Haaima took of her against her will and threatened to release if she betrayed him.
Asked about her understanding of how college and university students came to be working for Haaima, the ex-fiancée said she “assumed [the students] had contacted him or he had contacted the school offering placements.” She said she didn’t have more than a passing, superficial relationship with any of the employees — – that it was “saying ‘Hi’ in passing” and that “In front of me, it was all very professional.”
She stated that when one of the students left Haaima’s employment, he explained that the two had had a falling out. Williams asked if the witness knew what the falling out was about. She answered, “No, at that point in the relationship, we didn’t share a lot.”
About Haaima’s falling out with a second student, the witness said, “I know that when she graduated, he didn’t want to offer her a job, and she was unhappy with that.”
“Where did you get that information?” Williams asked her.
“From him,” the woman replied.
Later, Williams asked the witness, “Did you ever come to learn that Mr. Haaima wasn’t permitted to have placement students anymore?”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
The witness responded that one night, police had attended the residence, and Haaima spoke to them outside while she remained inside, controlling their two dogs.
“When he came inside from that conversation, he mentioned that one of his students had accused him of being sexually inappropriate with her, and [he said] that it wasn’t true. She was angry because he didn’t offer her a job when she graduated. That’s when he wasn’t allowed to have students working for his company, because of that accusation,” she said.
“How did you know it was connected to that accusation? Where did you get that piece of information?” the Crown inquired.
“He told me because of that accusation, he wasn’t allowed to anymore,” the witness said.
She also described an evening when Haaima had to leave a family event because one of the students lived next door and was leaving her residence. Haaima said he was “not allowed” to be near that person, and he left.
“I assumed that was the one who accused him; he didn’t tell me that,” the accused man’s former fiancée stated.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Williams, having established that the witness didn’t ask Haaima a lot of questions about something that brought the police to their home, asked, “Why was it that you were not asking questions? Can you speak to that?”
The ex-fiancée said Haaima had told her the student was angry and had made a false accusation. She said, “At the time, I was trying to work towards being trusting and not questioning things, and just trying to believe what he was saying, trying to build that trust… I just accepted what he told me, and it made sense in my mind… I avoided confrontation.”
It was “approximately a year” later in 2018, she said, that she discovered a used condom in the trash at the home. She confronted Haaima, as she had had suspicions that he had been cheating on her; she had found long purple hair in their bed (not her colour), among other things, she told the court.
At first he tried to deny it, but he eventually stated that he had “cheated,” the witness said.
She said she and Haaima decided to break up and go their separate ways. However, she said, they remained relatively amicable. He would visit her new apartment, to which he had a key, and walk the dogs while she was at work.
During this time after their breakup, the witness said, Haaima told her “another girl” was accusing him of “being inappropriate with her or abusing her in some way… And he told me [this girl] was contacting his previous girlfriends and current girlfriend and telling them what he did to her. [He said] if she tried to contact me, to ignore her and to let him know.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
“One thing that made me nervous,” the witness said, was that this other girl “knew where I lived. He [told me] that one day he was with the dogs and he had met up with her [at my place].”
The girl never did reach out to the current witness, but she is named as one of the victims on Haaima’s indictment.
Haaima is accused of 14 separate crimes against or pertaining to this alleged victim between 2016 and 2020, when she was under 16. These include, but are not limited to, sexual assault, sexual assault choking, sexual assault causing bodily harm, causing child pornography to be viewed by the victim, compulsion to commit bestiality with a dog, making child pornography, uttering death threats, and unlawful confinement.
This witness has yet to testify.
On Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025, Natasha Calvinho cross-examined Haaima’s ex-fiancée for just over an hour. Most of her questions clarified statements from the previous day, and the cross-examination proceeded very cordially.
Calvinho led the witness through parts of her interview with two Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers in April 2022, when the witness first learned that Haaima had been arrested and incarcerated. At that time, she said, she was not informed of the reason for his arrest.
The defence was also interested in establishing what kinds of cars Haaima and the witness drove throughout the relationship and how much time they spent together. Calvinho highlighted the deterioration of their relationship and how “over time, distance grew between you and Michael.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
“You spoke yesterday about discovering Michael’s cheating behaviours… Michael cheated on you many, many times,” the attorney stated.
“Correct, I believe so,” the witness replied.
However, Calvinho suggested, the witness “never caught him in the act.” Calvinho established that there were signs but they were not overt: “You didn’t hear anybody having sex in the office… yelling out for help or telling Michael ‘No’.”
The witness answered plainly, “No, I did not.”
Calvinho was particularly interested in the witness’s sleep habits. At least two women so far have testified that Haaima raped them in the home while this witness was home, sleeping in her room. One specifically said she didn’t scream for fear of waking Haaima’s fiancée and “ruining her life.”
The witness said that when she would sleep during the day, she would use the television in her room as a white noise machine to block out outside sounds.
Calvinho said, “You don’t have it so loud that it would disturb your sleep, right? It is at a low enough volume that… if someone, let’s say in the hallway, were to scream for you or yell for attention, certainly the TV volume wasn’t loud enough that you couldn’t hear that.”
“I agree,” answered the witness.
Earlier in the trial, in July 2025, two women testified that Haaima recruited them to be his ‘sugar baby’ on the website SeekingArrangement (now called Seeking.com), exchanging sex for consideration (that is, for money, drugs, or other benefits); he then lured them into a blurred relationship by also hiring them to work as placement students at his company, Ferus Media. During that time, between 2016 and 2018, it is alleged that he sexually assaulted both of them multiple times.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
A third employee of Ferus Media, who came to work there via an internship from St. Lawrence College, has also testified that Haaima asked her for movie dates, offered her drugs, and harassed her.
Haaima operated the company out of the house he shared with the witness, his then-fiancée.
Kingstonist will continue to report on the trial as it proceeds.
ONTARIO NOW NEWSLETTER Get our free new weekly newsletter
Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request.
There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again.
Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up This newsletter is only available for subscribers. If you are already a subscriber, please login now. If you want to become subscriber, please click here Yes, I’d also like to receive customized content suggestions and promotional messages from thepeterboroughexaminer.com.
You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply.
ONTARIO NOW NEWSLETTER You’re signed up! You’ll start getting Ontario Now in your inbox soon.
Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page.
Read more on thepeterboroughexaminer.com
