Gas-bleach mix, barbecue brush used to scrub me: victim
Young man lured through Facebook testifies at kidnapping-and-torture trial
Before he was dumped in the woods, a young man with autism who was lured via Facebook to his own kidnapping and torture said he had his bare skin scrubbed with a barbecue brush and a mixture of gasoline and bleach.
The man, who the Citizen is not naming to protect his identity, testified Wednesday at the kidnapping-and-torture trial of Laura Brahaney, 27, and Jake Hopwood, 28, at the Elgin courthouse from a video feed in another room.
Both Brahaney and Hopwood have pleaded not guilty to robbery, kidnapping and other related charges. Two others have pleaded guilty for their roles in the alleged plot to rob the man.
On Sept. 4, 2014, the man had been promised a hook-up with another woman that was arranged over Facebook, but answered his apartment door to find Laura Brahaney, the Crown alleges. Two men then entered his home and he was then blindfolded and bound.
After being choked unconscious and left in the woods, the man, then 25, made his way to a nearby home for help, wearing only his underwear, shivering and crying, court heard.
When asked Wednesday by Crown prosecutor Matthew Geigen-Miller how the man felt, knowing that the people responsible for his torture knew where he previously lived, he answered: “Haunted.”
The man’s cats, Samantha and Sabrina, “got scared” during the invasion at his apartment. He’s since moved because of “bad memories” there, he testified.
The man said he suffered “weeks, months” of pain from injuries to his eye (which caused some vision loss), wrists, neck and feet.
There was emotional pain, too. Thinking about what happened made him “depressed, upset in a way,” he said.
The man was led from his apartment to what the Crown argues was Brahaney’s residence.
Video footage from the man’s apartment lobby shows a woman, who the Crown contends is Brahaney, holding the man by his arm and leading him out of the building. Video from a gas station shows the man making phone calls; the Crown contends these were ransom calls to his father made at the urging of his alleged attackers. The calls went unanswered and the man was then taken to Brahaney’s residence, the Crown argues.
According to the Crown, the young man was later forced into a dog cage in Brahaney’s basement, where he was kept for 24 hours. The man testified he was fed cold cuts, chocolate milk and water.
Photographs of Brahaney’s home taken by police show the place littered with the man’s property — his vacuum, a small safe and even a red GoodLife gym bag.
The accused kidnappers are alleged to have pulled over by a wooded area off the highway, while on their getaway to Toronto. The man was taken into the woods, where one of his kidnappers, court has heard, choked him until he was unconscious. When he came to, he wandered to a nearby home and police were called.
Defence lawyer Michael Smith, representing Brahaney, asked the man in cross-examination whether he had used Facebook to try and speak to women before.
While the man first said he only spoke to women he knew, like his friends from childhood or work, Smith provided the man with excerpts from a Facebook chat that suggested otherwise. The man was communicating with a woman he’d never met, telling her where he worked, asking whether she was single, what colours she liked, calling her “honey” and saying he wanted to see her soon and give her kisses.
The man testified he had given money to women he met on Facebook prior to 2014.
Brahaney is not being held in custody, although her co-accused, Hopwood, is. The trial is scheduled to last three weeks.
The man’s cross-examination continues Thursday.
Photographs of Brahaney’s home taken by police show the place littered with the (kidnapped) man’s property