Complainant, accused testify in sexual assault trial

A Brandon woman testified Thursday that the man charged with sexually assaulting her in 2017 heard her “loud and clear” when she told him to stop.

“I had told him to stop because he was hurting me, and he pushed harder,” the complainant said in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench.

The accused, 30, pleaded not guilty to the charge of sexual assault before the Crown called the complainant to the stand to give her testimony.

The Sun cannot name the complainant because of a publication ban on any information that could identify her, which the Crown confirmed includes the accused’s name.

The woman testified that she moved to Brandon and started going to Brandon University in 2017. The accused didn’t attend BU but was living on campus at the time. She told the court she wasn’t in a relationship or friends with the accused, but that they had previously been co-workers.

The man texted her on Snapchat on Sept. 24, 2017, asking if she wanted to “hang out.”

She went to the man’s room, where they lay on his bed and watched TV for between 30 minutes and an hour, she said.

The man started “making moves” on her, trying to initiate sex, she said. She told him multiple times she didn’t want to have sex and gave several reasons, including that she wasn’t consistent with her birth control, she testified.

He told her he didn’t care and would wear a condom, the woman said.

“I gave in just to shut him up and insisted that if we were going to have sex, it would be with a condom,” she said.

Before he put the condom on, she said he “pushed my head down his torso” and wanted her to perform oral sex on him. She said she responded by laughing because she was uncomfortable and told him that she did not want to do that.

She said she watched him put the condom on and they began having sex in a missionary position, which lasted for no more than five minutes before they switched to “doggy style.”

“He had been pushing my head into the bed,” she said. “I had told him to stop, and he put more pressure … I told him to stop again, because he was hurting me and he was going to break my glasses.

“I froze once I realized that he did not care about how I felt.”

Crown attorney Sarah Kok asked if there was any possibility that he didn’t hear her. She said no.

She said the intercourse finished, and when they got up to get dressed, she saw the condom on the floor.

The woman went back to her dorm room and waited until the next morning to tell two of her close friends about what happened.

Over the next few days, she said she bought a pregnancy test and went to the clinic to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases and infections.

She didn’t have any further interaction with the accused until November 2017, when she “confronted” him about removing the condom, she told the court.

The man had texted her again asking her to hang out and she agreed, with the intention of asking him why he took the condom off, she testified.

When she asked him about it, she said he responded by saying he “didn’t want to ruin the mood,” which made her “very angry.”

In 2022, the woman reported the allegations to the Brandon Police Service.

Defence lawyer Bob Harrison confirmed that the sexual intercourse was consensual to start.

“With a condom, yes,” the woman said.

Harrison suggested that she wasn’t watching the accused the whole time and that he could have taken the condom off immediately after sex.

He questioned her about the noise level in the room, asking if the TV was on, if the bed was making noise and how she knew the accused heard her during sex.

She said she knew he heard her when she told him to stop, but he didn’t respond verbally.

In his testimony, the accused said they were having “regular sex” and that there was no indication it was “anything over the top.”

He said that while in the “doggy” position, he felt the rim of the condom break and immediately removed himself from her, flipped her over and while performing oral sex on her, grabbed and put on a new condom before having sex again.

The accused had no issue with wearing a condom, because not wanting to contract an STI or have a child “goes both ways,” he said.

Harrison asked him about the complainant’s comments regarding him wanting oral sex.

“I may have requested it, but the pushing her head down and stuff like that is completely out of character for me,” he said.

Kok asked him if he asked what the complainant was comfortable with before having sex. He said no.

She questioned him about how it was physically possible that he was able to grab a condom from his pants on the floor, open the package and put a new condom on.

She asked him whether he was pushing her face into the mattress. He said that if he was touching her head, he might have been pulling her hair, but “nothing else.”

Kok asked if this was something they had discussed beforehand. He said no.

The court also heard from a friend of the complainant, who she told the next day.

She testified that after that night, the woman seemed distant and withdrawn, which wasn’t normal, describing her as an otherwise “bubbly” person.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com