Man on trial for sexual assault

Editor’s note: This story includes content of a graphic sexual nature and may offend some readers.

A South Okanagan man is on trial for allegedly sexually assaulting a 13-year-old babysitter while she slept after an Oliver house party.

The man, who can only be identified as B.J. due to a publication ban protecting the identity of the complainant, is charged with one count of sexual interference of a person under 16 and one count of sexual assault. His trial began Tuesday in B.C. Supreme Court in Penticton.

The now-14-year-old complainant took the stand as the first witness for Crown counsel Ann Lerchs.

She testified the hosts of the engagement party in October 2016 hired her to babysit and look after guests’ kids, with arrangements made for her to stay the night on a downstairs sectional couch.

The girl, 13 years old at the time of the alleged incident, testified after falling asleep on the couch she felt a hand on her backside.

A short time later she said she awoke with her pants pulled down, underwear pushed to the side and a hand fondling her and fingers penetrating her vagina.

“I was surprised and got up very fast,” she said, adding when she awoke “his hand shot back to himself to ... what would be a sleeping position.”

The complainant identified B.J. in court as the man who allegedly molested her.

Defence counsel Don Skogstad produced photos of hands with tattoos, asking the complainant if she saw the tattoos on the hands that were allegedly touching her. She replied she did not see any tattoos.

Justice Alison Beames questioned if the identity of the person with the tattoos would be presented at some point in the trial while the photos were being entered as an exhibit. Skogstad said it would.

The complainant testified that after she got up she went to notify the party hosts and homeowners who were sleeping in a nearby bedroom. She said the man “went upstairs and hit the wall stumbling up” as she was knocking on the door, noting he was wearing white swimming shorts and no shirt, with a dark brown, short beard.

The female homeowner testified as the second Crown witness. She said it was around 3 a.m. when she was awoken by the complainant, who had tears in her eyes and was visually upset.

“She was crying and said somebody was touching her,” she testified.

After learning what happened, the homeowner took her dog and looked through the house multiple times. After noticing adult male feet in an upstairs bedroom, she sent her fiancé to investigate.

She testified she later saw B.J., a friend of her fiancé’s, in the backyard “crying, sitting on the chair with no shoes and white shorts on,” saying the man was “dishevelled.”

The trial is expected to continue today.