Not guilty verdict for former TRU student accused of rape

CONTENT ADVISORY – This article contains references to sexual assault

A Kamloops man and former Thompson Rivers University student accused of raping a friend in 2018 has been acquitted after the judge ruled the complainant’s evidence had too many inaccuracies.

According to a Sept. 26 BC Supreme Court decision, the accused claimed the sex had been consensual, but he wanted to keep it from his then girlfriend, who is now his common-law wife and the mother of his children.

The decision said that both the accused and the complainant are from an unnamed South Asian country and were studying at TRU at the time.

Both their names are covered under a court-ordered publication ban, which is unusual, as naming the accused wouldn’t easily identify the complainant, as is often the case where an accused’s name isn’t published.

“Apart from the general public interest in the prosecution of criminal offences, including the general public interest in the prosecution of sexual assault allegations, there are no facts or issues of particular public interest that require publication of these private details,” BC Supreme Court Justice David Crerar said in the decision. “There are no material points of testimony that a member of the public might step forward and call out as an untruth.”

The decision said that in 2017, the complainant had moved to Canada on her own and became friends with a group of people from her home country.

She was good friends with the accused’s girlfriend and saw the accused like a brother. As she didn’t have a car and couldn’t drive, the accused often gave her lifts to places.

On the night in question, the complainant was at the accused’s apartment while the accused’s girlfriend was at work. She alleged that while she was in his bedroom he raped her.

He then drove her home, but on the way, stopped at a lookout where they met up with friends, and he sexually assaulted her again.

A month later, she went to the Kamloops RCMP.

“She testified that she did not do so voluntarily, but was ‘blackmailed’ into doing so by her on-again, off-again boyfriend, who still lived in her native country, on the other side of the globe. When she told him that she had been raped by the accused, he threatened to publish intimate images of her on a pornographic website, and to tell her mother about the sexual incident unless she filed a police report,” Justice Crerar said in the decision.

The police interview lasted 30 minutes, and it’s unclear what action the Kamloops RCMP took, but three years later in June 2021, she went back to the RCMP in another city.

This interview lasted 90 minutes and was videotaped. She said she filed this report after she’d received protected refugee status, because she was worried it would endanger her immigration status if she did it before.

During the trial, she referred to the first police report as a “negligent” and “unofficial” report.

The Justice said there were problems with the complainant’s testimony.

“At times, the complainant was argumentative, defensive, and evasive in cross-examination. On several occasions, she refused to answer questions,” the Justice said. “She was particularly hostile to the first police report, which was, again, based solely on her own words. She criticized it, with some vehemence, as ‘not an official report’ and as a ‘negligent report.’ In testimony, she asserted that ‘I do not consider it a credible source.'”

The Justice also pointed out other “oddities” in her testimony.

“On two occasions, she gratuitously stated that she had repeatedly had to assert to her mother, to past boyfriends, and to the girlfriend of the accused, that she had been raped. Of course, an admission to any of those individuals that she had had consensual sex with the accused could have had adverse social and personal consequences,” Justice Crerar said.

There were discrepancies with her testimony regarding the number of people in the apartment at the time or when they stopped at the lookout.

“In this key detail about whether any, let alone two other people, were present in the apartment during the first sexual incident, the accused was accurate, and the complainant inaccurate,” the Justice said.

While the complainant had said she screamed loudly during the sexual assault, the roommate testified the opposite.

The Justice said this was “fatal” to the prosecution’s case.

“Sitting literally metres away from the bedroom, separated only by a door and a wall, in that small apartment, (the roommate) heard no noises coming from the bedroom, let alone the loud crying and shouts of ‘stop’ that the complainant repeatedly insisted, to the Court and to police, that she made during the first sexual incident,” the Justice said.

Ultimately, the Justice said that the evidence left considerable objective reasonable doubt, and found the accused not guilty.

NOTE TO READERS: To connect with a victim service program or violence against women program call VictimLink BC at 1-800-563-0808. VictimLink BC provides information and referrals to all victims, as well as immediate crisis response to victims of sexual and family violence.