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Winnipeg city Coun. Russ Wyatt is facing charges related to giving another man a noxious substance and sexually assaulting him, after an investigation that began last month, police say.<\/p>\n
City police said in a Wednesday news release Wyatt, 56, was arrested Tuesday in connection with an assault that took place at a home in the east area of the city.<\/p>\n
Police said the sex crimes unit began an investigation after a man reported he met another man on social media in December, and they saw each other in person more than once. <\/p>\n
The first man was given an illicit drug and sexually assaulted during one of their meetings, police say. After leaving, he sought medical attention.<\/p>\n
CBC News has confirmed the man charged is the councillor for the Transcona ward on city council. <\/p>\n
Wyatt has been charged with sexual assault and administering a noxious thing with intent to aggrieve or annoy, police said. He was released on an undertaking.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Wyatt deferred comment to his lawyer,\u00a0Evan Roitenberg, who said in a statement the councillor is innocent.<\/p>\n
“We’re not going to try this in the media,” Roitenberg said. “We look forward to the opportunity of having a trial.”<\/p>\n
Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham called the charges serious allegations.<\/p>\n
Police and the justice system “must be allowed to do their job and proceed without interference,” the mayor said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“In the meantime, I would recommend the councillor step away to deal with this matter.” <\/p>\n
Old Kildonan Coun. Devi Sharma, who is city council’s Speaker, said council does not have authority to suspend members who are the subject of criminal allegations.<\/p>\n
Wyatt was previously arrested and charged with sexual assault in July 2018. Police said at the time those charges stemmed from an incident involving a woman Wyatt knew. The charges were stayed in 2019.<\/a><\/p>\n Wyatt was first elected to represent Transcona in 2002, and was re-elected in 2006, 2010 and 2014.<\/p>\n He did not run for re-election in 2018, after he took a leave of absence for several months<\/a> to undergo addictions treatment. He successfully ran again for the Transcona seat in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-560720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}