The Backstory

All of the statements below are allegations of individuals who know Mark Jeffery and may not have been tested in a court of law, unless otherwise noted.

Mark Jeffery has a serious criminal record dating back to at least 1994. After I started reviewing this story, I spoke to a woman at My Place, the Collingwood women’s shelter. She called him a “career criminal” after reviewing his record with me when I asked her for advice on how to discuss this information with you. The lady at the Barrie courthouse who gave me the documents on his criminal activities agreed with that assessment - a career criminal.

Friends of mine in Collingwood know Jeffery well because he lived in Wasaga Beach with a friend of theirs, Chrissie, who is about 12 years older than Jeffery - and is currently in her late 50s. There were two women they know of previous to her in the area. There is a court order against Jeffery to protect Chrissie from him, to keep him from communicating with her.

The woman prior to her (Linda is her name apparently, no one is quite sure) was also older and owned either a hardware store or a pawn shop with her ex - Chrissie and her friends again aren’t sure which. She also has or  had a peace bond against Jeffery for domestic violence and there is supposed to be a third woman in the area from about five years ago as well who took out a peace bond against Jeffery. It seems the pattern continues and with each woman, the violence getts worse and worse. First peace bonds, now this last time Jeffery is arrested for assault and assault with a weapon, and does jail time. What level of violence will he aspire to next? 

On this page, I will give you details that Chrissie and her friends have told me of his last relationship - Chrissie (and her friends and family) are terrified that if Jeffery learns that she has spoken to me about his violent, abusive behaviour and criminal record, it will bring him back to seek revenge against her. Jeffery has already violated his peace bond once and done time for it, so there are real reasons for that fear.

Here is the short version of what happened according to Chrissie and her friends - almost right from the time Jeffery moved into in her house, there were arguments. These arguments turned into fights. On one occasion (this is one of the assault charges against Jeffery), Jeffery threw a beer bottle at her, hitting her in the head. She was badly injured and apparently still sees a doctor because of it - more than two years later. I was told the injury may force her to retire early.

On another occasion, Chrissie’s brother was in the house when Jeffery threw her to the floor and started punching her. The brother threw him out of the house, changed the locks and told his sister not to let him back. She did; within a couple of days, he had cried and  sweet talked his way back in - “I’m sorry, I love you so much, it will never happen again” - all the usual crap that abusers say and that women are suckered into believing - because they believe ‘He loves me, he won’t do it again’. They are always wrong - the man does it again, and again. It’s what abusers do. It’s what women of low self esteem expect and accept. And that's wrong.

Another occasion, Jeffery was allegedly driving drunk, he started fighting with Chrissie and then threw her out of the car. The police were called, but Jeffery hid the car before being pulled over and spent the night at a hotel near Wasaga Beach, and so avoided getting charged for impaired.

Chrissie took him back again - against the wise advice of her friends. The fighting continued, and one night not long after she woke up about 2 or 3 and found him in the bathroom with the door closed, talking to his old girlfriend on the phone. Another argument, more violence on Jeffery's part. All of this was her fault of course, not his, according to Jeffery. That’s standard for abusive men - blame the victim.

The last big fight, a group of friends were in Chrissies’s hot tub at her Wasaga Beach home. Jeffery had a major argument with Chrissie and then got out of the hot tub, went inside the house, and did $29,000 worth of damage to the house. The police were called, Jeffery was arrested and taken to jail. When he was released on bail, he was escorted to the house by the police to pick up his belongings and taken away again by the police.

While putting his belongings together for him to come and get, Chrissie discovered that he had for the second time hidden a suitcase full of drugs - marijuana - in her house, all of it packaged for resale. She turned the suitcase over to the police. Further criminal charges were laid against Jeffery for possession of marijuana for the purposes of trafficking. His lawyer plea bargained the charge down to possession as you can see in the indictment - it was done after Jeffery agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge. The trafficking charge would have meant serious jail time. In fact, he’d have been in jail now, since the deal was made on Mar. 26 of this year.

In total, the charges against Jeffery while with just this woman alone - just this one woman - are as follows:

Case # Case description

10-8098 - Mischief

11-0088 - assault, assault with a weapon

10-8099 - possession of substance (narcotic)

09-3767 - Operate a vessel while impaired; operate a vessel with over 80 mg of 

                 alcohol in his blood 

11-0301 - assault with weapon, mischief

11-0585 - fail to comply with bail

Regarding the impaired charges, Jeffery apparently got into a fight with Barrie police officers while being arrested for driving a boat impaired. He ran away and hid on another boat and when caught claimed it wasn’t him driving the boat he had been on. His lawyer was able to get him off the charge on some kind of technicality according to Chrissie and her friends.

There is also a 1996 criminal conviction against Jeffery out of Barrie court, which was a federal excise charge laid by the RCMP in 1994. According to the courthouse, it involved either drugs or alcohol and there were other people involved. I’m awaiting the details on that one as it has to come out of archives. Jeffery was fined $2100 in that case. The case id# is 94-6822-01. So Jeffery's criminal record goes back nearly twenty years.

There may be other charges in other courts as well. The 1996 charge showed a different birthdate for Jeffery - Jeffery may have lied about his birthdate, or the month and day were switched in error by a court clerk, so other charges against Jeffery in other courts may exist that haven’t been found. 

Because of the charges of assault and assault with a weapon, Jeffery's bail terms were that he was released to his sister in Milton and was not to contact Chrissie in Wasaga Beach. He violated his bail terms and in February, he phoned Chrissie from Barrie. The police traced the call and arrested him again about a week later, putting him back in jail for 30 days.

It would appear that the only reason Jeffery is not in jail on these charges right now is because Chrissie was too terrified by him to testify against him, causing the charges to be dropped. Again, this happens frequently in abuse cases - the victim doesn't want to be hurt again because she testified against the abuser.
Her friends locally are afraid that because she's spoken to me, Jeffery will return and, this time, kill her. Those are the words they used - 'we're afraid he'll kill her'. I’ve spoken with her - she wants nothing to do with Jeffery, she’s that afraid. I’ve taken the step of speaking to the police about increasing patrols near her home once this website goes live. The situation is that bad - no, actually, Jeffery is that dangerous in the opinion of his victims.

Jeffery operates a fish and chip stand out in Perkinsfield, and has been described by a man who does some work for his fish and chip stand as a ‘a time bomb’. 

I spoke to the investigating officer of some of these charges, and he told me he was aware of who Jeffery is, and of his small business, and that the drug squad are watching both the chip stand and Jeffery for further criminal activity. He was interested in knowing if I had any information to further their investigation, which of course I don’t.

This officer indicated to me that he expects he will see Jeffery back in custody sometime soon. He also said, given what Mark has done to other women, that he was concerned for the new girlfriend's safety if she continues to see Jeffery.

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really co-operating with it.” Martin Luther King

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If you are a woman trapped in an abusive situation, contact your local crisis center for advice and assistance on escaping from your situation. Here are some suggestions from the Crisis Center and from the police. Please note, these suggestions assume the laws in place in Ontario Canada. Your local situation may be different.

1. change the locks on your home, even if you haven’t given the abuser a key. They are not above stealing and copying your key. 
2. Advise building security that this individual is not to come in the building. Give them his photo.
3. Contact your local women’s crisis center and discuss your situation with them and get their advice.
4. Have the police visit him and get any keys he has back, including the key to the building, explaining why and who he is. They will do this for you. They will also caution him to leave you alone. Should your tormentor not do that, he is liable for arrest.
5. Get a peace bond and protect yourself, before you that get hurt.