Sarnia's former fire chief has scored another legal victory.
Pat Cayen's lawyer, Phillip Millar, says the Crown Attorney has withdrawn all charges against his client dating back to the 1970s when he was a youth.
Sexual assault-related convictions against the 57-year-old Cayen were overturned on appeal late last year by the Ontario Court of Appeal.
After having been sentenced to five years in prison in May 2015, Cayen was released on bail pending a new trial, or trials.
Millar says just the adult charges remain now and they're applying to move any proceedings to London.
"There's a lot more work to be done, but we've applied to change the venue to London because we think all of the media coverage has made it hard to get an impartial jury in Sarnia," says Millar. "So next week we'll be arguing to have the matter moved to London."
Millar says his client has maintained his innocence since day one.
"The police reported in a mass media story, 56 new counts, which made my client look guilty in the eyes of everybody," he says. "Now all of those charges are gone and there's only the one remaining matter in Sarnia."
Cayen was convicted in January 2015 of 19 counts as an adult involving a single victim and 14 offences as a youth involving three victims.
The court of appeal quashed the convictions, ruling an error in law was made by mixing adult and youth indictments and allowing similar fact evidence to be applied to both cases.
Cayen was initially charged in late 2012 and his employment with the Sarnia fire department was terminated early in 2013.
-With files from Josh Boyce