Sex assault, solicitation trial for elderly southern Alberta man begins in Lethbridge

Now 19-years-old, she took the stand and testified about meeting the 75-year-old when she was 13-years-old. She described how the man asked her to work with him at a local recreational centre’s concession. The woman described to the court that while at work, the elderly man would play with her hair, and put his hand on her thigh while she was on shift.

Crown Prosecutor Lisa Weich asked her what else went on during that time, to which the young woman described an incident where she was looking for a relative in the facility, and was holding a hot dog. She testified the man told her, “you know you could always take a bite out of my hotdog,” and then grabbed her buttocks as she turned away. The young woman said she was never comfortable with the touching, and that her mother terminated her daughter’s contact with the elderly man.

At the age of 17, the woman testified the man once again asked if she wanted a job cleaning bathrooms one day a week, at a camping site he operated for $20 cash “under the table.” However, during the second week of her shift, he pulled out a red laptop and opened it, displaying a screen saver with naked women. After some convincing she said he closed the computer.

Weich asked the young woman how she felt being in the man’s presence.

“He would always get too close,” she told Judge D.B. Nixon, indicating that he once again started putting his hands on her shoulders, back of her neck, and her thighs while the two were in the campground office. The doors were locked, she said, and no one could see inside.

The touching escalated, the 19-year-old said, when the man began playing with her pant or legging waistband, and then put his hand underneath it, asking “What if I pay you?” She testified that after telling him “no,’ she finally agreed, saying “If I’m going to do it, I might as well get paid for it.”

During subsequent work encounters, she told the court she began engaging in oral sex with the 75-year-old, and each time, she was paid $50. That soon graduated to vaginal intercourse, for which she thought she may have been paid $100 each time. The incidents allegedly occurred at the campground office, in a room at the recreational facility, the man’s home where he kept a number of guns, and in his truck.

“It was a lot of money for a kid who didn’t have a lot,” she said. On one occasion she described the man’s console in his truck where he kept cash, telling her that he was hiding it from his wife.

During the same time, the young woman told the court she did not get along with her mother, and subsequently moved into an old trailer at the campground. She never paid rent, but described herself as being “on call” for sex whenever the man chose. She was at the campground for 1.5 to 2 weeks, but then decided to move back home. She said shortly after that, she was fired.

The 19-year-old also tearfully described incidents where she had a boyfriend at the trailer on the campground, and the 75-year-old told her that he had many guns, and vast experience with them- and that if she had sex with the boyfriend, there would be “two bodies that no one would ever find.”

“I never had any genuine interest in it (sex). I was only in it for the money,” she said. Not long after the alleged threats were made, the 19-year-old testified that pipes in her motor home exploded and it was then, that she went to police.

The trial is expected to continue Tuesday, when the alleged victim is scheduled to be cross-examined by Defense lawyer Greg White.

by Lara Fominoff

Sex assault, solicitation trial for elderly southern Alberta man begins in Lethbridge

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