Motel owner denies sex-for-rent claim
John Viveiros Pontes says some of his tenants at the Northwoods Inn have been inside his suite — but he can’t recall if a woman accusing him of rape was one of them.
The woman, who testified Monday at Pontes’s sexual assault and extortion trial, described the layout of the suite where the alleged assault took place on June 1, 2017. Pontes corroborated some of those details.
If the woman was in his bedroom, it was because she was in “agony” about being evicted, Pontes told the Crown during his cross-examination on Tuesday.
A Saskatoon provincial courtroom heard how Pontes, 75, rents some of his motel rooms on Idylwyld Drive by the week and for $1,100 per month. Pontes said the woman, who had been staying there since April 2017, was warned several times about having drug users over to her suite.
She was told by security guards and the front desk that she had to leave, Pontes said. He testified he felt sorry for the woman, but had a “business to protect.”
The woman said Pontes was threatening to evict her because she was short on her rent money. She testified he told her she could stay if she had sex with him. Later that night, Pontes took her to his suite and then raped her when she changed her mind and tried to leave, the woman alleged.
“I had no intercourse with her or anybody else,” Pontes said, denying that he ever had a conversation with the woman about exchanging sex for rent or a job.
Pontes also denied groping the woman’s breasts in a back room of the main building before allegedly proposing the sexual exchange.
Defence lawyer Patrick Fagan closed his case after Pontes’s testimony. In his arguments, he admitted the complainant is an “exceedingly empathetic” witness, with a life story of teen prostitution, previous sexual assaults and an HIV diagnoses, which the woman said came 60 days after the alleged assault.
The woman said Pontes did not use a condom. Court heard Pontes is not Hiv-positive.
The fact that the Crown did not tender any evidence from the woman’s rape kit proves that no physical evidence of an assault came out of that examination, Fagan argued.
He said Pontes was fair and candid when he said the woman may have been in his suite at some point during her stay. However, Pontes was unshaken that the alleged assault “did not happen,” added Fagan.
Crown prosecutor Sheryl Fillo argued the woman’s testimony, which included signing her name under Pontes’s table and stealing a cup to prove she was there, was “compelling and detailed.”
Fillo said the defence appeared to be arguing that the woman was motivated to lie about the rape because she was angry about being evicted. But the woman was kicked out after she went to the hospital and gave a statement to police, Fillo pointed out.
Judge Morris Baniak reserved his decision until November. Pontes is also charged with sexual assault, extortion and uttering a death threat against a separate complainant.
That trial has been scheduled for February 2019.