In admission by both, the Crown and counsel for the accused admit to being on opposite ends of the spectrum in a Stephenville court case dealing with a teenage youth facing sexual assault charges.
This is the first of three trials on sexual assault allegations against the Stephenville teenager who was a student at Stephenville High School, which all three of his alleged victims also attended.
The accused took the stand on Tuesday morning, indicating through his testimony that he never had any relationship with the complainant through kissing or sexual intercourse as was testified to have occurred by the alleged victim.
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Under cross-examination by Crown Prosecutor Susan Gallant, the accused said he never had any personal contact with the complainant or instance where he met up with her in person or been in a vehicle he was driving or another person’s vehicle with her.
He said he never had any personal conversation with the complainant in school or outside, given her a pill or alcohol in a flask, as she testified.
During his summation in the trial against his client, defence lawyer Mark Mills spent most of his time discrediting the complainant saying her evidence can’t be believed, that Judge Lynn E. Cole can’t convict on “this flawed evidence.”
He said there were flaws in the times of the incident from her statement to police and evidence in court. He said she gave the wrong colour of the car in which she was allegedly sexually assaulted.
Mills said there were also differences in the amount of alcohol she admitted to drinking between what she told the police and the court.
He said there was an extraordinary inconsistency in failing to disclose post-incident contact with the accused a month after the incident happened and denied having a memory of sending the social media message.
Mills said another extraordinary consistency was the complainant admitting to have filed a false complaint on the accused, which he said demonstrated she is capable of concocting a story.
Gallant shot back that sometimes there are inconsistencies brought on by the trauma that a person has suffered.
She pointed to the fact that this witness initially denied what had happened but after further questioning by the RCMP about another alleged victim, she made the complaint.
In relation to the timing of the incident, Gallant said the alleged victim addressed the inconsistencies between the police report and the court testimony.
“I take some objection to suggestions by counsel about the inconsistencies in the amount of alcohol she drank. She’s underage, so it wasn’t comfortable speaking to a police officer about that when she wasn’t supposed to consuming alcohol,” she said.
In relation to the pill that the accused is alleged to have given her, Gallant said it was with the understanding that it was supposed to relax her.
The trial continues this week.
