Editor’s note: This story contains graphic details that may be disturbing to some readers.
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James Munroe was supposed to be her client, not her violent, disturbing harasser.
But the horrifying text messages in 2022 to the London sex trade worker finally ended the Sarnia man’s years-long campaign of harassing and sexually violating women through anonymous text messages, extorting pornographic images from them and, in some cases, raping them until they were unconscious.
Munroe, 33, pleaded guilty to 17 charges Tuesday including sexual assault, making child pornography in the written form and multiple charges of threatening bodily harm and criminal harassment, with some of the charges dating back to 2014.
He entered his pleas instead of beginning a three-week trial on 28 charges involving eight victims who were subjected to some of the most troubling and graphic demands ever heard in a London courtroom.
Many of them were made in text messages sent from numerous anonymous phone numbers.
The identities of the victims are protected by a court-ordered publication ban. One of them was in the courtroom to hear assistant Crown attorney Heather Donkers read in an 18-page agreed statement of facts. Others tuned in through a teleconferencing link.
Two victims are dead, including the independent sex worker who reported the disturbing communications on June 21, 2022, she had with a cellphone number later tracked to Munroe.
Donkers told Superior Court Justice Spencer Nicholson the communications with the sex worker began in February 2022 after Munroe’s phone number responded to an ad she had placed online.
In May 2022, Munroe offered the woman $1,000 to have sex with him “with a bag over (her) head” while he called her by the name of one of his other victims. She declined, but the messages continued with graphic details, including his desire to “choke u unconscious.”
He upped the offer to $5,000 if she would “trick” another victim into meeting him so he could rape her. The woman told Munroe to stop, but the messages became more graphic and more threatening, to the point Munroe suggested he would assault her until she was admitted to hospital or dead.
She was fearful and said no. Munroe called her every obscene name imaginable with the threat “meet me now and let me . . . hurt you,” and calling her a “useless piece of trash.”
That was enough for the woman to go to London police, who began to piece together Munroe’s terrifying activities targeting vulnerable women.
The police sent out a media release with Munroe’s phone number to locate other victims after he was arrested for the harassment of the sex worker. They also discovered Munroe had downloaded TextNow in April 2019, an app that allows users to obtain randomized phone numbers.
Three victims came forward once they saw the media release. Each reported similar experiences: anonymous harassing messages for months or years that became more graphic and disturbing, with Munroe suggesting he wanted to kidnap and “rape” them. Also, images of the women, some scanned from social media sites, were put on fetish websites.
In one instance, a woman who had been harassed for years received videos of a man performing a sex act on photos of the woman and her friend.
One sex worker had sex with Munroe for money three or four times in 2019, but his requests became so uncomfortable she stopped participating.
That summer, when she was intoxicated and walking home from a party, she misdialed her boyfriend’s number and spoke to “an unknown person” saying where she was. She woke up sore at a parent’s home and recalls little after that, but did receive an anonymous text from Munroe, using a number she didn’t recognize, informing her he had picked her up that night and sexually assaulted her.
She agreed to send him intimate images, “believing he was someone else,” Donkers said. Munroe threatened to post the photos unless she did what he wanted, which included sending him pornographic videos.
Out of fear, she agreed, and called Munroe, not knowing he was the extorter, to participate because she knew he would pay for sex. The police found one video where the woman clearly tells Munroe to stop while he forced her into a sexual act, and is assaulted to the point she fell unconscious.
Then, once he was sent the video, Munroe continued to extort her, telling her he wanted to kidnap her, sexually assault her and her boyfriend and sell her to his friends. Her boyfriend also began receiving anonymous threats. She began to suspect it was Munroe in April 2022 when she recognized his voice in voicemails.
Another woman reported harassing messages and slanderous posts on a website. One of the posts encourages people to knock on her door to get sexual favours and “to slap (her) buttocks if anyone were to see her in public.”
She changed her phone number in February 2022 and it was reassigned to a 13-year-old, who began getting Munroe’s texts that were so graphic they met the definition of child pornography by written word. Also, Munroe used the name of one of his victims and posed as a 15-year-old girl, sending out images of her and other women in bathing suits poached from their Facebook profiles to adult men.
The woman who changed her phone number reported she met Munroe in person when she was 14 and engaged in kissing and sexual touching with him until she was 16. He was aged 19 to 21.
Another victim, who was suffering from severe alcoholism, arranged to have oral sex with Munroe in exchange for alcoholic beverages, sometimes with her baby in the room. Sometimes, Munroe would record the encounters, during which the woman was so intoxicated, she was unable to consent. She also received anonymous harassing messages she suspected were from Munroe but wasn’t sure “because the sender would use a variety of phone numbers.”
She was contacted by the police after they discovered screen shots of the messages on Munroe’s digital devices.
A sentencing hearing for Munroe, including victim impact statements, is slated for Jan. 24.