Defence says rape claim against ex-coach fabricated
Former Olympic taekwondo coach faces 15 sexual assault charges
The sexual assault allegations made by a former student of multi-time Olympic taekwondo coach Shin Wook Lim are fabricated and are similar to descriptions of sexual abuse committed by a Winnipeg taekwondo coach, Lim’s defence lawyer said Thursday.
Lim has pleaded not guilty to 15 counts involving the alleged sexual assault or sexual touching of two female students between 2013 and 2017.
The first complainant testified Tuesday that she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Lim over two-and-a-half years starting when she was 15 years old. In her testimony, she said the abuse gradually escalated from inappropriate messages to forced kissing and touching to rape between 2014 and 2017. Her identity is under a publication ban.
At the end of cross-examination on Thursday, Lim’s lawyer Danielle Robitaille asked the complainant to admit the abuse never happened.
“Absolutely not,” the complainant replied.
The complainant testified that she wrote about the case of Winnipeg coach King Yeung for a criminology class in 2018, citing media articles documenting Yeung’s guilty plea in 2017 for sexually assaulting three minor students.
She denied that writing the paper, titled “The abuse of power in the martial arts community,” triggered her to realize that she had been abused.
She said it was after a later lecture in her criminology class when she “put the dots together” and realized that what had been done to her by Lim was not for her own benefit but for Lim’s.
“That is the same analysis, I would suggest, that you come to in your paper about King Yeung,” Robitaille said. The complainant agreed but said that at the time of writing the paper, her memories of abuse were still “locked away” in a box in her mind.
Robitaille said the complainant’s allegations had commonalities with the news accounts of Yeung’s case, including references to “grooming,” Yeung being in a position of power, a pattern of abuse that happened periodically and the phrase “inappropriately touched.”
The complainant said she could not recall using the phrase “inappropriately touched” and said she was only describing the abuse she experienced.
In response to questions from Crown prosecutor Jill Witkin, the complainant said there were also aspects of the Yeung case that were not in her allegations.
Robitaille also questioned the reliability of the complainant’s memory, pointing out inconsistencies between some of her accounts to police, at the preliminary inquiry and at trial, including whether or not a door was locked, whether or not her underwear and shorts had been pulled down and whether or not she was pushed against a door during some of the sexual assaults.
The complainant said her memory of some “small details” surrounding the sexual assaults had faded and she could not clearly recall if she had been pushed against a door or the wall next to the door or what exactly she had been wearing.
Because there had been so many instances of abuse, some had blended together over time, she said.
She denied that she was lying to the police or in court when her accounts differed, and said she was telling the truth as she remembered it at the time.
She maintained that she clearly recalled what happened to her body.
Robitaille pointed out that the complainant had left out describing some instances of sexual assault in her testimony at the preliminary inquiry and at the trial.
The complainant said she’d been sharing so much information she may not have realized she hadn’t said some things.
“It was word vomit, I was saying so many things I hadn’t said in a year and a half really,” she said.
“It’s not that I don’t remember it happening.”
The trial continues.