Explicit Language: Alleged victim in sex assault trial testifies to abuse suffered at the age of eight

Nov 5, 2019 | 4:55 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – A 41-year-old woman took the stand during a sex assault trial in Court of Queen’s Bench in Lethbridge Tuesday, to describe how the abuse she says she experienced at the hands of a Raymond man began more than 30 years ago.

The now 51-year-old is facing four charges of sexual assault, and one charge of sexual interference. He has already been convicted of three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault as a youth.

His name, the names of the alleged victims and even some of the witnesses can not be published because of a publication ban.

The woman said the abuse began when the man was 18 years old, and continued in two different homes, and in a vehicle. She testified that he would perform oral sex on her, and at least one time, penetrated her with an object she couldn’t identify. The abuse didn’t stop she said, until he went away on a mission for two years.

She tearfully told the court “I didn’t understand it,” and “I knew I couldn’t tell anybody, because it was a secret.”

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The alleged abuse took place between 1986 and 1987.

She ended up telling her parents, who then took her to church officials, however nothing was ever reported to RCMP until 2016. That’s when the woman says she found out the man had become a high-profile member of her church and would be screening children for baptism at the age of eight. She said she didn’t take her decision lightly, but that she didn’t want any other young girl to become a potential victim again.

Under cross examination, Defense lawyer Robert Bissett asked the woman about multiple dates and times, when she finally told people about the abuse, and how she went about it. He accused the woman of not only making up the various scenarios she described, but also where it all occurred, and accused her of colluding or trading information with three other alleged victims.

The woman told Bissett that she may have written a letter in response to one sent to her by the accused apologizing for “the burden set upon her.” In it, she wrote that she forgave him, but “that’s what good girls do.”

“I was a child,” she continued. “It doesn’t mean I forgave him or forgot that, or that it was o.k.”

by Lara Fominoff