Sask. man guilty of abducting daughter to keep her from getting COVID shot

A man accused of taking his young daughter away so she wouldn’t get a COVID-19 vaccination has been found guilty of abducting her.

Global News has confirmed for 980 CJME that Michael Gordon Jackson, 55, was found guilty Friday of abduction in contravention of a custody order after a trial at Regina Court of King’s Bench.

Jackson was arrested in Vernon, B.C., in February of 2022 on a Canada-wide warrant after abducting the girl in order to keep her from receiving the COVID vaccine.

His daughter was found safe by police at the same time, and was returned to her mother in Regina.

The high-profile case began in November of 2021, when Jackson failed to return his daughter to her mother in accordance with their custody agreement.

According to Global News, jurors heard throughout the trial — including from Jackson himself — that he took the girl to keep her from being vaccinated. He believed his ex-wife would have their child vaccinated, and Jackson thought it would cause harm.

The question for the jury was to decide whether Jackson was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of intending to deprive his ex-wife of possession of the child. The girl’s mother had full custody of her daughter.

“In this trial I am the judge of the law, and you are the judge of the facts,” Justice Heather MacMillan-Brown told the jury before they began deliberations Friday morning.

On Feb. 15, 2022, the Mounties released a video of the mother pleading for the girl’s safe return. In a little more than a week after its release, the video was watched more than 440,000 times and shared more than 13,000 times.

At the time, the RCMP said it had received tips and information from numerous jurisdictions before finding Jackson and his daughter.

— With files from Global Regina