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SARNIA – An abduction charge laid against a Lambton County woman has been dropped after she pleaded guilty to disobeying a court order and was sentenced to house arrest.
Everyone was fine, safe, and healthy after a year-long investigation led to an arrest on Jan. 17, 2023, and resulted in 10 charges that included abduction, a Lambton OPP spokesperson said at the time. No further information about what happened was available, police said, but they announced Brittany Norris, 25, of St. Clair Township was charged with abduction in contravention of a court order, obstructing a peace officer, and eight counts of disobeying a court order.
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Norris was held in custody pending a bail hearing, police said at the time. About a week later, multiple video clips were posted to her TikTok social media account including “Sarnia cops arresting me” and “Sarnia police at its finest.”
More than a year later, all of the other charges were dropped after Norris, now 27, from the Wilkesport area, pleaded guilty recently in a Sarnia courtroom to a single count of disobeying a court order.
“We don’t see these types of charges in the criminal courts very often,” Justice Mark Poland pointed out. “They’re rare.”
The court heard Norris repeatedly refused to follow a court order linked to her family for at least eight months leading up to January 2023. Norris’s TikTok account also includes two videos posted in December 2022 called “#opp#petrolia” and “#petroliaopp #fyp” where she appears to be confronting officers about her court orders.
The penalty Poland imposed was suggested by assistant Crown attorney Meaghan Jones and defence lawyer Nick Cake: six months of house arrest, six months with a curfew, then one year of probation.
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“There’s a need for the court to speak out against what Ms. Norris did: the repeated violations, the disrespect she showed,” Jones said. “There’s harm there that needs to be reflected.”
Poland said Norris treated her court order, imposed by a different Sarnia judge, like it was some sort of a suggestion.
“It, of course, was not,” he said.
Cake agreed the behaviour went on for a long time, but pointed out his client, a Lambton College graduate and personal-support worker with no prior criminal record, has changed since around the time she was arrested.
“I do want to inform the court that things are back on track and have been since January of 2023,” he said.
“I would just like to apologize for my actions,” Norris said to the judge.
Poland said the sentence the lawyers suggested was appropriate, but cautioned Norris before implementing it.
“This is not going to be an easy sentence for you to comply with,” he said. “This is jail. It is jail in your home.”
The first six months is full house arrest with GPS tracking and the final six months features a curfew, but Norris is banned from alcohol and drugs the whole time.
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