She was first to report police sergeant who targeted 33 women. Now she's sharing her story
CBC
Kerry Benjoe knew him as Jay Lewis, a kind and supportive man who said he worked as a contractor. He became a close and trusted friend after a wrong-number text he sent connected the two in 2018.
“He came at a time when I was at my weakest,” Benjoe said.
She was staying in a shelter with her daughter, having left an abusive relationship and needing to cut ties with all her family and friends in order to leave.
Other than her children, Benjoe said she was alone, with no friends outside of the shelter. She wasn’t working and was on medical leave from work. Jay Lewis would become her “lifeline” for the next three years.
He first texted Benjoe two weeks after she filed criminal charges against her ex – her phone number was in the police file – the message was addressed to his friend Rick.
The two formed a deep friendship, slowly built over text; it took four months for them to meet in person for the first time. Benjoe said he made no demands of her and while there was some romance and intimacy between them, they were never in a committed relationship and she never claimed him to be her partner or boyfriend.
“That friendship was more important than anything and he was always there,” Benjoe said.
She now knows that trust and relationship was built on a lie. Jay Lewis’ real name is Robert Semenchuck, a now disgraced, former sergeant with the Regina Police Services. Semenchuck pled guilty to one count of breach of trust and unauthorized use of a computer in November for using an internal police database to contact and pursue intimate relationships with vulnerable women.
Benjoe is one of 33 known women he contacted under false pretenses.
She was also the first one to discover he was a police officer and submit a complaint, which initiated a two-year police investigation that ultimately led to him resigning from the force and being charged in March 2025.
A sentencing date is set for Friday.
According to court documents, Semenchuck improperly accessed a police database for over a decade starting in 2011, with multiple audits confirming “an alarming number” of women were “searched without a work reason.”
Many of the women Semenchuck approached were vulnerable. Some were victims of crime or domestic violence.
Some knew him as Steve Perkins, but he only used the name Jay Lewis with Benjoe, she said.
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