Supreme Court nds man guilty of sexual assault

A Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice has found a man guilty of sexual assault, saying the victim was a credible witness even though she had little memory of the night it happened.

e two people involved were strangers at the time of the assault, which happened in 2014 during a cabin party in the small Pictou community of Garden of Eden.

e woman, whose name is protected by a publication ban, said she had consumed several alcoholic drinks – before and after arriving at the cabin – and was too intoxicated to remember much of the night.

“ e gaps in her memory were genuine,” Supreme Court Justice N.M. Scaravelli said in a written decision released late last week. “(She) was not evasive or argumentative during cross-examination. I am con dent that she was trying to be truthful.”

e victim had gone to the party with her boyfriend at the time, but the two became separated after an argument and he spent the night with a friend.

e day after the party, the victim said she woke up in the cabin “in a panic” because she didn’t know where she was and couldn’t remember how she got there. During a ride to her boyfriend’s home on an all-terrain vehicle, according to the decision, the woman felt a pain in her rectum. It triggered a ashback to the previous night, in which she vaguely remembered saying “it hurts.”

More memories came later on, court heard.

“And then realizing I just started to cry,” she said in her testimony.

e day after the party, she went to the hospital, where a forensic examination was performed, and she contacted the RCMP.

In June 2015, police followed the accused to a parking lot in Stellarton, where they collected a cigarette he discarded and sent it in for analysis. DNA from the cigarette ended up matching the sperm sample from the swabs taken from the victim.

e assailant, whose name and age were not released in the written decision, testi ed the woman was sober enough to consent, and the pair had consensual sex.

Scaravelli wrote in his decision that the man’s testimony contradicted evidence from other witnesses.

“According to witnesses, she progressed from being unsteady on her feet, slurring her words but coherent to extremely intoxicated and incoherent by midnight,” he said, also noting the accused was evasive under questioning about the time the sexual activity happened.

e judge also said certain elements of the man’s testimony were contradicted by DNA evidence, which cast further doubt on his story.

While Scaravelli said he was not satis ed beyond a reasonable doubt the victim was too drunk to consent to sex, he accepted the victim’s evidence that she was asleep at the time the assault happened and she did not consent to sexual activity with the man.