A preliminary hearing has been put off until October for a Red Deer RCMP officer charged with sex assault.
The preliminary hearing for Const. Jason Tress had been scheduled to run for five days in May but will now begin on Oct. 1 in Red Deer provincial court.
Preliminary hearings are held to determine if there is enough evidence to take a case to trial. Evidence presented at a preliminary hearing is covered by a publication ban.
Tress faces two counts of sexual assault and two counts of breach of trust arising out of incidents involving three women in 2012 and 2016.
The charges were laid in March 2017 after an Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) investigation into an allegation that an RCMP officer sexually assaulted a woman in 2016 at the Red Deer detachment.
It is alleged two of the incidents occurred while the officer was on duty.
That allegation led to further investigation and other charges.
Two of the alleged incidents occurred while the officer was posted in Red Deer. He was at a rural detachment when the alleged 2012 incident occurred.
Tress, an eight-year officer, was suspended with pay in August 2016 as a result of the initial allegations.