The “mega trial” of Michael Mark Haaima resumed Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, after a two-week summer hiatus, with testimony from the boyfriend of one of Haaima’s alleged victims.
Justice Robyn M. Ryan Bell is presiding over the judge-only trial, which began at Frontenac County Court House in Kingston on May 29, 2025, and is expected to continue until at least the spring of next year.
Forty-year-old Haaima is a Kingston area tech entrepreneur facing 98 separate charges, including those for numerous sexual assaults, aggravated sexual assaults, exploitation, making and distributing child pornography, forcible confinement, uttering threats, obtaining sexual services for consideration (including from minors), luring, and compulsion to commit bestiality. The charges involve incidents between 2007 and 2022, when Haaima was arrested. Police have likened the case to that of Paul Bernardo.
Court resumed Tuesday with a man in his 30s confirming an earlier witness’s testimony that Haaima had raped her on Saint Patrick’s Day, 2017.
In 2016 and 2017, the man was in a long-term relationship with a former witness in the trial. He testified that they were living together, but that the relationship was an open one. The testimony he gave on September 2, 2025, was in response to questions from the Crown.
According to the witness, he was aware that his girlfriend met Haaima on the website ‘Seeking Arrangements’ and established a ‘sugaring arrangement’ with him — with Haaima acting as the ‘sugar daddy’ (giving her money and gifts in exchange for sex). Things were tight financially, and the witness said he agreed that the extra money would be helpful for her.
Soon, the witness testified, Haaima offered his girlfriend a job working for him as a web developer. However, after several months in his employment, his girlfriend quit both the sugaring relationship and the job at the media company. The witness explained that his girlfriend had become increasingly irritated that Haaima was not paying her.
In the course of dissolving her working arrangements with Haaima, the young woman asked the witness on March 17, 2017, if he would walk with her to pick up something at Haaima’s house, but he refused.
On her return, the woman shared that she and Haaima “had had sex” and that “it wasn’t planned,” the witness recalled. She asked the witness if he was “okay with that,” he said. The witness testified that he had told her he was disappointed that it happened, “but happy [she] told me,” as they had good communication about the open relationship.
The witness stated that they talked it through, but despite his acceptance, the woman kept asking him multiple times a day if he was “okay with” what had happened on March 17, 2017.
“A couple of days later,” he testified, “she asked me again and then she broke down crying, sobbing, saying she didn’t want that at all and that he raped her; held her down on a table, forced her pants down, and forced himself on her.”
She was angry that the witness had refused to accompany her to Haaima’s home, he shared.
“If I was just there, none of that would have happened,” he stated, saying he felt awful about the situation.
“That was the last thing I wanted for her. She was my partner; I wanted her always to be happy, feel safe.”
In May 2017, the couple decided that she should go to the police and file a report.
“It just wasn’t right, and someone had to know about what happened,” the witness stated.
Once she filed her report, the witness testified, his girlfriend told him that police strongly advised her not to go forward with the complaint, that it would be “a very hard time for her on the stand” if she had to go to court. Police did not charge Haaima at that time.
Despite being disappointed and angry, the witness said, making the report helped his girlfriend “feel empowered” that if anything else happened involving Haaima, her complaint on file would help a future victim.
After all of these events, the witness described his girlfriend as being hyper-vigilant, afraid of seeing Haaima in the community, and fearful of being alone.
“She never wanted to see him again,” he told the court.
Several witnesses have now described being sexually assaulted by Michael Haaima; 28 alleged victims in all have already testified or will testify. Defence attorney Natasha Calvinho has likened the trial to “28 sexual assault trials back to back.”
A police officer involved with the case has mentioned the parallel between it and that of Paul Bernardo, one of Canada’s most infamous convicted killers and sex offenders, telling Kingstonist, “The only difference is that those women were attacked out of the blue by a stranger, not like Haaima.” Those sentiments were reiterated by the same officer today.
Between 1987 and 1990, Bernardo committed increasingly violent rapes in and around Scarborough, Ontario. In the early 1990s, he and his then-wife Karla Homolka committed a series of brutal crimes, including the rapes and murders of at least three teenagers, two of whom they kidnapped. In 1993, DNA identified Bernardo as the “Scarborough Rapist,” responsible for 18 attacks in that city. On September 1, 1995, Bernardo was convicted of several offences, including the two first-degree murders and two aggravated sexual assaults. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for at least 25 years — many of which he served here in Kingston. He was designated a dangerous offender, making him unlikely to ever be released. In 2006, Bernardo confessed to sexually assaulting at least 10 other women in the Toronto area in attacks not previously blamed on him.
Bernardo began his incarceration in Kingston, first at Kingston Penitentiary and then at Millhaven Institution, before he was quietly transferred to a medium-security prison in Quebec in July 2021, as first reported by Kingstonist. Strikingly, Bernardo is no stranger to Frontenac County Court House where Haaima’s trial is taking place; while Bernardo was serving his sentence at Kingston Penitentiary, detectives interrogated him at the courthouse in an attempt to connect him to further cases.
Michael Mark Haaima is charged with the following offences contrary to the Criminal Code:
- 20 counts of sexual assault
- Seven counts of unlawfully accessing child pornography
- Six counts of obtaining sexual services for consideration
- Seven counts of forcible confinement
- Three counts of assault
- Harassment by watching and besetting
- Four counts of overcoming resistance to an offence/attempt to choke
- Criminal harassment by communication
- Five counts of sexual assault with choking
- Four counts of uttering threats of death or bodily harm
- Uttering threats of death or bodily harm to an animal
- Compulsions to commit bestiality
- Mischief under $5,000
- Three counts of invitation to sexual touching (of a minor)
- Three counts of sexual interference (of a minor)
- Procuring of a person under 18 years of age
- Trafficking of a person under 18 years of age
- Three counts of obtaining sexual services for consideration (of a minor)
- Sexual assault with a weapon
- Sexual assault causing bodily harm (choking, suffocating, or strangling)
- Two counts of sexual assault causing bodily harm
- Two counts of luring for making child pornography
- Two counts of aggravated sexual assault
- Two counts of making child pornography
- Making child pornography available
- Four counts of possession of child pornography
- Accessing child pornography
- Assault with a weapon
- Assault with a weapon causing bodily harm
- Assault with a weapon (choking)
- Two counts of voyeurism
- Disobeying a lawful order (of non-communication)
Kingstonist will continue to report on the trial as it progresses.
