‘I thought I was actually going to die,’ woman tells court on first day of trial

A western Manitoba woman described feeling shocked and scared throughout her eight-year relationship, alleging her former partner raped her five times and strangled and physically abused her in front of their son.

“Every day I would wake up, I didn’t know what the day was going to bring. I just made the best out of my situation,” said the 38-year-old woman, who testified behind a screen in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench on Tuesday.

“I didn’t feel like I had anywhere else I could go … I hoped he would change.”

A 43-year-old man pleaded not guilty to three counts of assault, assault by choking and sexual assault before Justice Scott Abel on Tuesday, marking the start of the two-day trial.

A publication ban prevents the Sun from identifying the woman and the man, who resided in a small town in the Westman region.

During her Crown testimony, the woman alleged the accused consumed alcohol and drugs almost daily and first became physically violent toward her in January 2015 when she was more than seven months pregnant.

She told Crown attorney Reid Girard she couldn’t remember why he got angry with her after he returned home from drinking at a neighbour’s house.

“We were fighting and, like, he was right in my face … and then he just hit me,” she said while mimicking a partially closed fist against the right side of her head.

She said she fell over and then he went outside and “couldn’t believe what he had done.”

“I just remember, like, being really in shock that he hit me. Like, I really, really was taken by surprise,” she said, adding that the assault left her with a bump on the head.

The woman said the accused became increasingly violent, aggressive and controlling after the initial assault. He allegedly struck her in the face and head about 20 times, used a cigarette to burn her skin and kicked her near the base of her spine so badly she couldn’t sit down for at least six weeks, she said.

She testified he first raped her in 2017 when she was cuddling in bed with their son who was about two years old. She said she was pretending to sleep and tried to ignore him when he came home after midnight, started rubbing her side and then penetrated her vagina with his penis.

She described four more incidents that occurred between 2017 and April 2020 where he would rape her without wearing a condom as she laid next to their son in bed.

The woman said she never consented to having sexual intercourse in any of the incidents and felt “on edge” whenever the accused would come home late at night.

She also described going to a medical clinic in January 2019 after he allegedly hurt her arm when he grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her, slapped her in the head and then pushed her into a wall hard enough to break the drywall.

She said she dropped to the ground, crying in pain and thought her arm was broken. She went to the medical clinic that day and lied to the nurse practitioner about her arm injury, saying she slipped on a patch of ice.

The woman alleged the accused went to the clinic with her and told her not to tell the truth about how he hurt her arm. The nurse practitioner told her she had a hairline fracture and needed further treatment at a different medical facility, but the woman wrapped her arm in a tensor bandage instead.

She testified that she wanted to tell the nurse the truth, but feared what might happen to her, especially since she had lost contact with her family at the time and didn’t have her own bank account.

About 10 to 11 months later, the woman said she was sleeping next to their son when the accused came home and dragged her from the bed by her arm and hair into a back room.

The accused straddled her, put both hands around her throat and strangled her for about 30 seconds, she said.

“I thought I was actually going to die,” the woman said, adding that she couldn’t breathe. She claims he then dragged her to the front door and threw her outside before smiling as he locked her out in the cold.

The woman said she was barefoot in a T-shirt and shorts in -40 C with the windchill for about 10 minutes before the accused’s son from a previous relationship told her, “He’s not mad anymore,” so she could come back inside.

Court heard the woman and the accused were separated between April and October 2020 before they got back together and then ended their relationship again in March 2022.

The woman said she didn’t report any of the alleged violence to police until 2023 because she felt like she deserved the abuse and feared he would retaliate.

During cross-examination, the accused’s defence lawyer, Bob Harrison, suggested she was making the allegations up and questioned why the woman didn’t take pictures or videos of her injuries.

The woman said the accused would frequently look through her phone.

Harrison suggested she got extremely angry, assaulted him and was told to “cool off” outside during the 2019 incident. Harrison also suggested sex between her and the accused was consensual and that their son was never in the room.

The woman refuted both claims, saying testifying is an uncomfortable experience and she would not have put herself through it if she was making everything up.

The trial continues on Wednesday with testimony from the accused.

» tadamski@brandonsun.com