Ontario Review Board
Re: Kristopher Ginn
ORB File No: 5616
Hearing held on: Friday, April 17, 2026
Place of hearing: Southwest Centre for Forensic Mental Health Care
Pursuant to: Section 672.81(2.1) of the Criminal Code
Before:
Alternate Chairperson: Ms. S. Kert
Members: Dr. S. Simpson Dr. S. Wiseman Ms. K. Tomaszewski Ms. C. Plyley
Parties Appearing:
Accused: Kristopher Ginn Counsel: Mr. S. Gehl
The person in charge of hospital: Counsel: Ms. J. Zamprogna
Attorney General of Ontario: Counsel: Mr. J. Huber
REASONS FOR DECISION
(Dated May 25, 2026)
Overview
On May 19, 2010, Kristopher Ginn, was found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder on charges of assault and assault causing bodily harm. Those charges arose as a result of incidents that occurred on March 31 and November 7, 2009, on the grounds of psychiatric hospitals at which Mr. Ginn was a patient. In each case, unprovoked, he assaulted another person.
Mr. Ginn is currently subject to an Ontario Review Board disposition detaining him at the Southwest Centre for Forensic Mental Health (Southwest Centre or the Hospital), with privileges extending to living in the community in approved accommodation. That disposition was made following an annual hearing in February 2026. At that hearing, the Hospital recommended that Mr. Ginn’s disposition be changed from a conditional discharge to a detention disposition, and the Board agreed.
On March 17, 2026, the Review Board received notice from the Hospital that on March 10th, Mr. Ginn’s privileges were restricted to only leaving the unit escorted by staff. As Mr. Ginn was exercising daily indirectly supervised community privileges for an extended time prior to that date (and this was his liberty norm), and as the increased restrictions on his liberty continued for more than seven days, the Hospital requested that a restriction of liberty (ROL) hearing be scheduled.
On April 17, 2026, this panel of the Review Board held an ROL hearing at the Southwest Centre. Mr. Ginn attended with his counsel, Mr. Gehl. At the start of the hearing the parties confirmed that the sole issue was the question of the significant increase in restrictions on Mr. Ginn’s liberty, and the hearing proceeded on that basis.
The position of the Hospital and the Crown was that the significant restriction on Mr. Ginn’s indirectly supervised community privileges was warranted in the circumstances and continued to be necessary and appropriate at the time of the hearing. Mr. Ginn agreed that the original restriction was warranted but submitted that the evidence did not demonstrate that the ongoing restriction was necessary.
Having considered the evidence and the submissions of the parties, we find that the increased restrictions on Mr. Ginn’s liberty were necessary and appropriate when initially imposed and continued to be so up to the time of the hearing. These are our reasons.
Background/Context
To understand the current restrictions, some context is necessary. In October 2020, Mr. Ginn was discharged from the Southwest Centre to live in a 24/7 supervised group home overseen by Community Homes for Opportunities (CHO) in St. Thomas. At his annual ORB hearing in October 2022, his treatment team recommended a conditional discharge disposition, given that Mr. Ginn had done well at his residence, and in the community, without any admissions for two years. The Review Board agreed.
Mr. Ginn continued to live at the same group home in St. Thomas until May 15, 2025, when he was readmitted to the Southwest Centre after the group home received complaints from another resident about being inappropriately touched by Mr. Ginn. Mr. Ginn was agreeable to a hospital admission to allow for stabilization and future planning, and the admission was considered voluntary. In June 2025, during a meeting with CHO staff, the group home owner, and the outreach team, Mr. Ginn agreed to a mutual termination of his tenancy at the group home. He is ineligible to reside in any CHO home for five years from that time.
As a voluntary patient, Mr. Ginn was permitted to come and go from the Hospital largely as he wished. He was able to independently organize his daily routine and utilized hospital transportation to access the community. He enjoyed regularly attending drop-in programs at a local community centre sponsored by the CMHA and went to the library on his own.
In mid-January 2026, the treatment team received a report about an incident at the community centre involving Mr. Ginn allegedly making comments or advances of a sexually inappropriate nature toward a peer. Mr. Ginn initially denied the behaviour, but as the peer reported feeling unsafe at the community centre, Mr. Ginn’s passes to the centre were revoked. However, his indirectly supervised community access to the library continued.
At Mr. Ginn’s annual ORB hearing in late January 2026, Dr. Quinn, his attending psychiatrist, confirmed the view of the treatment team that many of Mr. Ginn’s inappropriate sexual behaviours “impress as less sexually motivated and more as inappropriate/immature mechanisms to gain social approval.” Mr. Ginn had been referred for psychotherapy aimed at addressing his inappropriate behaviours and improving his social functioning, as well to a dialectical behavioural therapy skills group, and was already engaging to some degree in both programs at that time.
At the conclusion of the annual hearing in January, the Board agreed that because Mr. Ginn had no housing available to him and the Hospital required the ability to approve any accommodation to ensure an appropriate placement, a detention disposition was necessary and appropriate.
The Restriction of Liberty
After his annual hearing in January, Mr. Ginn continued using full indirectly supervised community privileges (level 7) until March 10, 2026, when the treatment team received information regard Mr. Ginn’s behaviour during a psychology assessment session the previous day. According to the report, in response to a routine question posed by the clinician as part of a cognitive screening measure, Mr. Ginn raised and shook his fist and spoke in a manner that the clinician perceived as intimidating, including stating, “You’re gonna get it.” When the clinician later walked past Mr. Ginn, he reportedly said, “What the hell!” and stuck out his tongue at her.
In response, Mr. Ginn’s privilege level was reduced to zero, resulting in him having no independent off-unit privileges and no community access. As outlined in the Restriction of Liberty Report and in the oral evidence of Dr. Curry (a psychiatric resident under the supervision of Dr. Quinn), the restriction decision was based on the treatment team’s ongoing concerns related to Mr. Ginn’s pattern of interpersonal behavior, and their view that a pause in privileges was necessary until the team had greater clarity regarding the underlying reasons for his behaviours.
Since the restriction was imposed on March 10th, Mr. Ginn has continued with the sexual health education that he was receiving from staff, though the program has now shifted slightly to address his deficits, including issues of personal space and boundaries, and how he picks up on social cues.
On March 17, Mr. Ginn was granted level 3 privileges, which allows him unlimited in-hospital indirectly supervised access and the ability to leave the Hospital accompanied by staff. However, at the time of this hearing his indirectly supervised community passes remained on hold.
Dr. Curry testified that particularly in the weeks leading up to the hearing, Mr. Ginn was cooperative and participating in treatment aimed at reducing his inappropriate behaviours and improving his insight into his behavioural tendencies and their consequences. Dr. Curry said that there has been some improvement in Mr. Ginn’s insight into the impact of his actions on others, as well as general progress in terms of his behaviours. Based on this, the treatment team had applied for level 4 privileges for Mr. Ginn, and were hopeful those would be approved early in the week after the hearing. Level 4 privileges will include indirectly supervised passes on the hospital grounds up to three times a day, for up to 30 minutes. Assuming things continue to go well, the plan is to gradually increase his privileges over a period of a number of weeks.
Analysis and Conclusion
We are satisfied that both the initial significant increase in restrictions on Mr. Ginn’s liberty (in mid-March) and the ongoing restrictions on his indirectly supervised community privileges (to the time of the hearing), were warranted or, in other words, were the necessary and appropriate measures to manage his risk.
The incident on March 10, 2026 occurred in the context of Mr. Ginn engaging in an escalating pattern of impulsive, inappropriate behaviour, albeit largely of a verbal nature (i.e. inappropriate racial and/or sexual comments or jokes). This came to a head on March 10th, when Mr. Ginn acted in a physically intimidating way toward a psychologist in response to what appears to have been a routine question. Though the clinician was sufficiently concerned by the behaviour that she asked to be contacted when Mr. Ginn left the unit, when assessed subsequent to the incident, Mr. Ginn became irritable and dismissive, and demonstrated only limited appreciation for the consequences of his actions. At one point he claimed that the staff member was fabricating the concerns she had raised, then recanted this statement and attempted to normalize the behaviour as something that should be expected in a hospital.
We understand that since that time, the treatment team has worked with Mr. Ginn (particularly in the area of sexual health) to manage his inappropriate sexual and interpersonal behaviours that make others feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Mr. Ginn has been more engaged in therapy, has shown progress, and at the time of the hearing had been recommended for level 4 privileges. All of this is positive. However, we agree that the restriction on his indirectly supervised community privileges remained necessary while that work continued up to the date of the hearing.
To support Mr. Ginn’s progress, reinitiation of those privileges should occur in a gradual way. Mr. Ginn should be able to tolerate expanded privileges without reports of the same types of problematic behaviours in social situations that led to the current restrictions. As described by Dr. Quinn (who also testified briefly), because of his behaviour toward a peer in January, Mr. Ginn is currently banned from attending at the community centre where he had regularly been attending for years. Hopefully that will change in the near future, but right now his world is fairly small. The plan of the treatment team, which we support, is to try to ensure that he is better set up to successfully utilize his community privileges going forward, so that he can continue to enjoy public spaces and community activities on his own.
DATED this 25th day of May, 2026, at the City of Toronto, in the Toronto Region.
Ms. S. Kert
Alternate Chairperson
Office of the Registrar
Ontario Review Board