Couple found guilty in teen sex-slave trial

A Nepean couple who used teenaged girls as sex slaves in a basement on the 2014 Victoria Day weekend has been convicted after a five-day trial.

Both of the 16-year-old girls testified in court and gave horrifying accounts, with one saying she had been hog-tied and gagged, then repeatedly raped in a Nepean basement by new-found “friend” Caroline Budd, 21, and Antonio (Anthony) Comunale, 32. The girl testified that she screamed in pain and begged them to stop, but the couple just laughed.

“They said I’m a good sex slave. … They wouldn’t stop. They were giggling and laughing,” the girl testified.

Budd and her ex-boyfriend Comunale were convicted of several counts sexual assault and forcible confinement.

The girls told court they had met Budd a month earlier and that she and her then-boyfriend, Comunale, had plied them with booze until they were fallingdown drunk.

During the trial, lawyers for the defence branded the pair of teen victims as “pretty little liars” who concocted the sex-attack stories just to keep out of trouble with their parents for being “naughty girls.”

But Ontario Court Justice Kent Kirkland believed the girls’ wholeheartedly and described them as “compelling, credible and reliable.”

“They did not conspire to fabricate their stories,” the judge told court.

Budd and Comunale are scheduled to be sentenced in November.