The text popped up on K’s phone while she was staying in a domestic-violence shelter. For T, it arrived as she grieved the death of her husband. C got the text as she grappled with serious mental-health issues. P was feeling lonely and unlovable.
The texts all appeared to be from a wrong number. They said things like, “Hey buddy, how’s it going?” and “How was your fishing trip?” and “Hey Rick, what are you up to, man?”
The text came at the lowest point in K’s life. From being a successful professional supporting her family, K was now living in a women’s shelter, unemployed and homeless. She’d fled without her clothes and possessions, and had nothing except a cellphone her daughter had given her. K responded to the text with a joke. A conversation started.
The man who texted her would become one of the most important people in K’s life. Soon they talked and texted every day, sometimes all day. She was still living at a shelter when they met in person for the first time.
They saw each other for four years before their contact dwindled, and it felt to K like the relationship had run its course. They’d hadn’t spoken in over a year when a text from him lit up her phone early in 2023.
But this time, something had changed.
“I think because I was in a different headspace and because I hadn’t talked to him in over a year, I wasn’t so easily manipulated any more,” K says. “I was like, ‘Do I really know this guy?’ And I started questioning everything.”
She put his picture into a powerful facial recognition software service she’d heard about on TikTok. Three matches came back. One showed the man she knew as Jay Lewis, a construction contractor, sitting at a desk. There was a police jacket hanging in the background.
When K showed the picture to an acquaintance in the police force, the person said it was Sergeant Robert Semenchuck, a veteran officer with the Regina Police Service.
“I can’t describe the feeling, everything that went through my head in that moment,” says K, who, like other women in this story, is not being identified because of a court-ordered publication ban. “One of the first things that hit me was fear. Fear of this person, his power and what he could do.”
K's complaint to Regina police paved the way for the investigation into Robert Semenchuck.Heywood Yu/The Globe and Mail
This was the photo that K fed through facial recognition software to confirm who 'Jay Lewis' really was.Supplied
For K, the wrong-number text no longer felt random or serendipitous. Instead, she wondered whether the veteran police officer had accessed her phone number through the file in her domestic-violence case. And she wondered what else he knew about her.
K filed a complaint with the Regina Police Service early in 2023, prompting Mr. Semenchuck’s suspension with pay from the force.
In March, after a two-year investigation, the Crown laid two criminal charges against Mr. Semenchuck: One count of breach of trust and one count of unauthorized use of a computer, for allegedly using police databases to pursue personal and intimate relationships with dozens of women over almost 15 years.
K is one of 24 women identified in court documents related to the case. The Globe and Mail spoke to seven of those women for this story. All seven say they had an intimate relationship with a man they believed to be a contractor or project manager named either Steve Perkins or Jay Lewis, after receiving what appeared to be a wrong-number text.
None of the women knew his real name, or that he was a police officer, until they were informed by police during the investigation.
“It’s a double hit: Jay is gone. Jay died when I realized Jay was Bob. And now when I think of Bob, it’s fear,” K says. “If he could pull off those lies and do all that he did to deceive me, I really don’t know what he’s capable of.”
C had been single for nearly two decades when she got a text from a guy named Steve, looking to hire people for his company.
When she replied, a conversation started. C was single, lonely. It felt almost like it was meant to be.
“I was 18 years trying to find someone, and I didn’t know how to go about it,” C says. “So I just took a chance.”
C saw the man she knew as Steve for a year and a half. She says parts of the relationship were good, and that he could be sweet, gentle and caring.
But C says Steve could also be aggressive and controlling. When she wanted more of a relationship, she says he’d say, “Things are complicated right now,” and that he made excuses when she invited him on dates or to concerts.
“He was sex-crazed,” she says. “He always wanted naked pictures of me and everything. I thought I wasn’t wanted because I’m a bigger woman, so it made me feel good. It made me feel, ‘Hey, I’m okay. There‘s nothing wrong with me.’ It kind of gave me a push of confidence.”
C says the man she knew as Steve could be aggressive and controlling.Liam Richards/The Globe and Mail
He would ask her for sexually explicit photos and videos.Jana G. Pruden/The Globe and Mail
In text messages viewed by The Globe, Steve repeatedly accused C of having sex with other men, while demanding she send him sexual videos and nude photos.
C has mental-health problems, and says she sometimes felt like Steve was playing mind games with her. At one point, she blocked him for a month. But she went back to him.
“I just don’t know why I continued talking to him,” she says. “He just kept on messaging me.”
She says their relationship finally ended in the spring of 2023, when Steve stopped responding to her texts. C later learned that’s when police investigators seized Mr. Semenchuck’s phone.
“How did he know who I was? Why did he choose me?” C says. “There’s answers that I’ll probably never get.”
At a press conference announcing the charges, Regina Police Chief Farooq Sheikh said Mr. Semenchuck may have made contact with some of the women in the case through police calls, “but a majority of them, I don’t think he knew them.”
Police released a photo of Mr. Semenchuck, saying some of the affected people may not know him by his name, but may recognize his face.
“We acknowledge that a police officer being charged can negatively impact trust and confidence, and I’m hoping that the community also recognizes our accountability and transparency here today,” Chief Sheikh said.
Weeks after the press conference, Chief Sheikh was also put on leave while the Public Complaints Commission investigates a woman’s complaint against him. The details of that complaint haven’t been made public.
Nicolas Brown, Mr. Semenchuck’s lawyer, declined to comment on his client’s behalf.
Mr. Semenchuck spent 22 years with Regina's police, becoming a sergeant in 2013.Michael Bell/The Canadian Press
Mr. Semenchuck, 53, grew up in Regina but began his policing career in Calgary in the late 1990s, working there for five years before moving back to Saskatchewan and joining the Regina Police Service in 2003.
Police have released little information about Mr. Semenchuck’s 22 years with the service, but say he spent a large portion of his career in plainclothes units that deal with complex investigations, such as robbery and auto theft.
Mr. Semenchuck was promoted to sergeant in 2013, and received the Governor General‘s Exemplary Service Medal for policing in 2018.
He does not appear in a photograph of that year’s recipients, and has no other identifiable online presence. The women who spoke to The Globe said they thought it was unusual that the man they knew as Steve Perkins or Jay Lewis wasn’t on social media, but for most of them, it was something they were able to explain away or ignore.
Mr. Semenchuck resigned from the police service on April 21, the day before his first court appearance. He is not in custody, and no trial date has been set.
Courtney Powers, director of communications for the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General, would not comment on why only two charges were laid against Mr. Semenchuck covering dozens of cases, and whether any other kinds of charges were considered.
A source familiar with the investigation said the allegations actually involve 30 women, but the ministry, Crown and the police would not confirm that’s the case.
It's not yet clear when Mr. Semenchuck will return to Regina's provincial courthouse to face trial.Liam Richards/The Globe and Mail
Some of the women who spoke to The Globe had previous interactions with the Regina Police Service as victims of crime, like K, who was the victim of domestic abuse, and C, who says police were called to help her when she was suicidal. T had contact with the police after her home was vandalized. But others say they’d had no contact with the police, and don’t know how – or why – a police officer would have found them.
“I have no idea how he found me,” says one of those women, P. “I hadn’t had a ticket. There was nothing really that was going on with me that would have come up. It‘s a mystery to me.”
Another woman, Bridgette Cyr, says she’d been the victim of “a lot of domestic violence,” and that her ex-husband had served time in jail for assaulting her. But that was many years before she got a text from the man she knew as Steve.
Ms. Cyr declined to have her identity covered by a publication ban in court, and wanted to be identified by name in this story because, she says, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I felt like I’ve been stalked. I didn’t know how he would have picked me, how he came to be interested in me, and I felt really violated that he had all that information about me and I didn’t even know the guy’s name,” Ms. Cyr says.
“It‘s really violating. It really puts you in a position of you can’t trust anybody. Not the police, not no one.”
Meghan Hillsdon, one of the other women named in the court documents, says she would have been “a perfect target” when she got what appeared to be a wrong number text shortly before Christmas in 2022.
She was a disabled single mother, healing from spinal surgery. Her father had just died, and the text arrived days before Christmas. The text appeared to be intended for a drywaller named Chris.
“And because of how lonely I was, I decided to respond,” she says.
Ms. Hillsdon also declined to have her name covered by a publication ban, and chose to be identified by her full name in this story because she believes it will make her safer.
“You have one of two choices when you’re in this situation. You either be really quiet and live your life in fear, or you be the face of it,” she says. “Because if something happens to you, at least there’s a record of it.”
Having gone through the courts before as the victim of a sexual assault, Ms. Hillsdon says she has little faith in the system – or the police – to protect her. Instead, she says she used the small inheritance she got from her father’s death to move out of the province.
“Where do you go for help, when where you‘re supposed to go is who came at you?” she said.
‘Steve’ claimed his first texts to Ms. Hillsdon had been meant for someone else. Later, police would tell her she may have been targeted.Aaron Hemens/The Globe and Mail
T met the man she knew as Steve as she tried to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. She says the last text she got from him was in April, 2023, asking for a picture of her breasts.
She never heard back, and didn’t know there was anything more to it until police contacted her and told her they believed she was “the witness to a crime.”
During her interview, she says investigators showed her a page from a notebook with details about her written on it, including her name, phone number, address, what she did for a job, and how many children she has. There were also things that Steve told her about himself – that he was a contractor who’d been divorced for five years and had two sons who were welders.
“I was so disgusted with myself, and so ashamed,” says T. “I was finally starting to feel normal. I could breathe. And then this happened.”
While the relationships the women had with the man they knew as Steve or Jay ranged in length and intensity, all the women who spoke to The Globe said the effects have been profound.
Meghan Hillsdon and Bridgette Cyr have both moved away from the city out of fear. P says she’s become “basically a recluse,” and has a hard time leaving the house.
“The relationship has really changed me,” she said. “I’m not the same person I was before.”
All of the women who spoke to The Globe said they feel ashamed or embarrassed, and have trouble trusting anyone.
“You hear people say things like, ‘How could girls be so stupid, anyway?’ And then I’m thinking that I’m one of those stupid girls,” P says. “This person comes into your life and you think, ‘Oh, he’s pretty great. He does the right stuff, and he’s pretty handsome and he really likes me.’ And then you realize that it was all just a big fat lie.”
Ms. Cyr says, “I just feel like, ‘Damn, I’m stupid. How did I let this happen?’”
Ms. Hillsdon received this photo of Mr. Semenchuck, as his ‘Steve’ persona, in 2022. She has since moved away from Regina.Supplied
In addition to the seven women who knew Mr. Semenchuck as the contractor Steve or Jay, The Globe spoke to one woman, H, who says she was contacted by Mr. Semenchuck in his role as a police officer, after she was the victim of domestic violence by her then-boyfriend in 2019.
Though two female officers attended the 911 call, H says Mr. Semenchuck e-mailed her a couple days later and asked her to meet him at the police station, seemingly to talk about another aspect of the investigation.
Instead, she says he told her she was too good-looking for her boyfriend, and texted her frequently for months afterward, “harassing me, constantly asking for pictures and videos and suggesting really gross stuff.”
She says she was dealing with the effects of domestic-violence relationships and addiction at the time, and “kind of just let it go, because he had a badge.” But she says the personal meetings and texts from a police officer – often sent late at night and talking about her body, asking her whether she slept naked, or requesting pictures of her in a bathing suit – disturbed her and made her uncomfortable.
“It was constant,” says H. “At first, I went along with it because, I don’t know, maybe my self-esteem was a little lacking. And then I told my mom about it, and she’s like, ‘That’s really inappropriate.’ And then I was like, ‘Yeah, that really is inappropriate.‘”
H says the messages stopped when she changed her phone number in the fall of 2019, and that she’s struggled to know what to make of the situation. When she spoke to The Globe, she was still considering whether or not to go the police.
“I’m not sure. Like, I don’t think what he did was – I don’t know,” she said. “I guess he is getting charged for that. So I guess I should tell them.”
More than two years after K first went to the police, she’s relieved charges have finally been laid against Mr. Semenchuck. She spent a long time terrified of him, and of other police officers, and she feels safer now that the allegations are out in the public.
Still, K says she worries about how the legal system will treat one of its own, something that almost kept her from going forward against a police officer in the first place.
“I just knew that being an Indigenous woman, the justice system wasn’t on my side,” she says. “He was not just a cop, but a veteran cop who won these awards for exemplary service. It wasn’t just a normal person. He had so much more power than I did, and that was so much scarier.”
K says her heart races every time she sees a police car. She still misses Jay at times. When she does, she has to remind herself he never existed.
Do you have any information that might be relevant to the Semenchuck case? Get in touch with Jana G. Pruden at jpruden@globeandmail.com.