Alleged rape has damaging impact

Ugochukwu Godwill Egwuekwe, 23, is charged with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old woman in his Charlottetown apartment on June 28.

In court on Monday, Det. Tara Watts of Charlottetown Police Services led off a long day in court as the Crown’s first witness.

It was Watts’s videotaped interview of Egwuekwe at the police station played in court that took up a good portion of the time she spent on the witness stand.

Unfortunately, much of the soft-spoken, heavy-accented recording of Egwuekwe, who goes by the nickname Ambition, was incomprehensible.

What did come across loud and clear on several occasions, though, was the accused’s denial of sexually assaulting the complainant. He even claimed consensual sex never took place.

Watts testified that the complainant went to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown hours after the alleged incident and received a sex assault examination.

Semen that was recovered from the woman was deemed a match for a DNA sample taken from Egwuekwe, she told the court.

The complainant’s mother testified the alleged rape has had a damaging impact on her daughter.

She says her daughter has had anxiety since the incident and has been hospitalized three times.

After the complainant told her mother over the phone that she had been raped, the mother tracked her down at a McDonald’s restaurant in Charlottetown.

“She didn’t want to go to the hospital,’’ she testified.

“She was afraid to go to the hospital.’’

The complainant is expected to take the stand today.

There is a publication ban prohibiting any information being printed that may identify the alleged victim.