Woman woke up feeling paralyzed, court hears
Sex assault trial witness may have suffered memory loss from drugs slipped to her
The last thing the 29-year-old woman says she can remember before her memory suddenly blacks out is the red strobe lights at the club in Saint John, N.B.
“I was having fun dancing and laughing,” she testified Tuesday. “I did not feel dizzy . . . I did not feel unsteady.”
She woke up early the next morning in her date’s bed unable to move, she testified.
The question is whether her memory loss and feeling of being para- lyzed was caused by drugs slipped to her by the young doctor she was on a first date with, or by the rapid consumption of alcohol.
The woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, is testifying as part of a similar fact application by the Crown in the judge-alone trial of two doctors accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a medical student together in a downtown Toronto hotel room. Both men have pleaded not guilty. Superior Court Justice Julie Thorburn will rule whether the woman’s testimony can be used to rule out coincidence in the Crown’s case against one of the men, Dr. Suganthan Kayilasanathan, 36.
No charges were laid related to the woman’s allegations. She is not alleg- ing she was sexually assaulted and told the court that she does not recall any sexual contact that night and did not find any indication of a sexual encounter the next morning. After meeting Kayilasanathan on the Plenty of Fish online dating site, they arranged to meet in person on Dec. 19, 2008, she testified. It was a “weird” date, she said, consisting of takeout food at his condo and waiting for him at the hospital when he was called in to work for an hour. In an attempt to salvage the night, they agreed to go dancing at a club. Before her memory blacked out, she says, she believes she had three drinks over the space of about an hour to an hour and a half. Kayilasanathan bought her all the drinks, she told the court. She said she had a “flash of memory” later that night of being back at Kayilasanathan’s condo and being adamant that she wanted to sleep on the couch. She said, during crossexamination, that she is not sure if it is a real memory or made up. She testified that she woke up early in the morning in Kayilasanathan’s bed and felt “heavy,” as if she was “nailed to the bed.” “I wanted to get the hell out of there . . . but I physically couldn’t do it,” she testified. When she woke up a few hours later, she said she felt more like she would with a normal hangover and calmed herself down. Defence lawyer David Humphrey suggested the woman had been drinking quickly enough to cause memory loss and that her feeling of “paralysis” the next morning was related to her alcohol consumption.
Kayilasanathan had gone out to the hospital in the morning, and when he came back he sat by her on the bed and offered her water, she testified.
“He was great . . . he was trying to make me comfortable with me being really drunk and hung over,” she said, adding that she felt safe because he was a doctor.
He kissed her, but she stopped it and awkwardly left, she said.
She said that she later suspected she might have been drugged, but only reported the incident to the police in 2011after her mother forwarded her an article about Kayilasanathan being charged. He has pleaded not guilty.