Victim ‘beyond frustrated’ by latest sex case delay
The victim in a Kings County sexual assault case says she's angry that her attacker has delayed his case yet again, and now won't be sentenced until February.
“I'm beyond frustrated,” the woman said Dec. 5.
Darrin Phillip Rouse was scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 9 for sexual assault and drug trafficking, but asked for a delay to have a presentence report prepared.
Rouse, 53, was convicted Oct. 11 of sexual assault and drug trafficking involving the woman, who was 16 at the time. He was in his 40s.
“I just want it dealt with,” the victim said. “Every single time there is a date set I have to work myself up to it. There's a lot to deal with mentally and get yourself prepared, and then it doesn't happen.”
She said that creates an emotional letdown.
“Mentally it's just an emotional roller-coaster ride; you're angry and sad,” the woman said.
She said she can't move on until the sentencing is over.
“It sucks,” she said.
She said she has to book off time from work, and find a babysitter who is available for the entire day because she has no way of knowing how long a proceeding will last or when it will get underway. If she can't find anyone, the children's dad has to lose a day's work to look after them.
It has happened too many times, she said.
“He plays the system. He knows how to do it.”
The woman, who is now in her 20s, testified at a trial earlier this year that she was a teenager when Rouse got her hooked on Dilaudid, which he often exchanged for sexual favours.
Rouse was originally supposed to be sentenced on Nov. 4, but asked for that to be delayed because he was assaulted while in custody.
At a hearing Dec. 4, the judge allowed the adjournment.
Crown attorney Saara Wilson said she couldn't speculate on why the request came now and not in October after Rouse was convicted, but that it could be “because he finally realized what he's facing.”
Wilson filed her sentencing brief with the court on Nov. 20, and is asking for a sentence of eight years in jail. Defence responded asking for the PSR on Nov. 29.
“I haven't really been making a secret with defence counsel of the general idea of what I'm asking for,” Wilson said.
Crown attorney Mike MacKenzie, who had handled five previous sex trials involving Rouse, had been vocal in his frustration with repeated last-minute delays in those proceedings, saying he was convinced Rouse was simply employing delaying tactics.
“I'm not going to make any official comment on that,” Wilson said when asked if she shared that view in light of the latest delay.
“I think it's in everyone's best interest to have this matter reach its conclusion,” she said.
Defence lawyer Patrick Eagan said he couldn't discuss the reason for the late request for a pre-sentence report without instructions from his client to do so.
Wilson said she had argued against the delay, but it's difficult to oppose a request for a presentence report.
“My position was that I would very much like (the matter) to continue as scheduled, but I can't really argue against a pre-sentence report.”
Even getting to the sentencing stage was delayed. The trial ended in May, with the decision scheduled to be delivered in August, but that was delayed because Rouse was assaulted in jail prior to that date as well.
The trial was supposed to start in the spring of 2018, but Rouse fired his original lawyer before the scheduled start of the trial, causing a delay, and then the second lawyer asked for another adjournment to get up to speed in the case.
The next start date in October 2018 was also delayed when Rouse asked for a fitness assessment. It was moved to November, but the second lawyer quit the case on the start day, citing an "irreparable breakdown in the solicitor-client relationship."
It was rescheduled again for February, but Eagan requested an adjournment because he had only been retained the previous week and needed to become familiar with the case.
Between 2017 and October 2018 Rouse had six other scheduled trials in Supreme Court. In that time, he asked for delays in several of his proceedings by asking for a sexual offender assessment report, asking for another chance to do the report after it didn't get done because he wouldn't co-operate with the first interviewer, firing his lawyer in a different case, asking for time to get a lawyer after he was refused a new one by Legal Aid, filing mistrial applications, filing applications for court-ordered funding for the mistrial applications, and because he was recovering from being beaten up in jail on a third occasion.
Most of those requests came on the day of, or a couple of days before, a scheduled court appearance.
Rouse is serving seven years in jail after convictions at three separate trials in 2017 and 2018.
The convictions were for two charges of trading drugs for sex, one of sexual interference against a 13-year-old girl, and one of drug trafficking.
Rouse has two other previous convictions for sexual assaults. He was sentenced in 1999 to 15 months in jail, and in 2004 to three years in prison.
He was acquitted in December 2017 of sexually assaulting a sixyear-old girl, and also acquitted earlier of criminally harassing a young woman. Another trial on charges of uttering threats and criminal harassment did not proceed because the complainants didn't show up to testify.
Rouse is still awaiting trial on three charges of sexual assault that were laid in January involving a different complainant. That trial is scheduled for next year.
“I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to have this matter reach its conclusion,”