A B.C. Supreme Court Justice has found a man guilty of sexually assaulting his stepdaughter nearly 20 years ago while they were living in Fort St. James.
In reaching her decision, Justice Heather Holmes concluded the man not only touched the girl for a sexual purpose but subjected her to sexual intercourse when she was a child, which means he will face a bigger consequence when sentenced.
During a trial, the court heard the stepdaughter, now 26 years old, was the target of sexual abuse that may have begun when she was as young as five years old and ended when she was in grade four.
The man would refer to the activity as "bugging" and when her mother had taken her aside and asked her why she was getting into so much trouble at school - she had been lying, stealing and generally misbehaving - she used the term to describe what was going on. The mother subsequently thought the man was merely teasing her, like he did with all their children.
The abuse stopped at that point, however, and although the victim wanted to tell someone, she kept it a secret until about two years ago when she presented a letter to her mother outlining the abuse the man had inflicted on her as a child.
In part, defence counsel had argued that what the victim provided in testimony was seriously inconsistent with the written statement she gave to police in which she made no reference to "penis," "vagina," or "rape," despite advice from social workers that she provide as much detail as possible.
But Holmes concluded that read as a whole, the statement made clear she was reporting sexual assaults "without purporting to detail the mechanics of how they took place" other than to note that baby oil was used. Holmes also noted the statement was not the product of police questioning but rather written by the victim to help in making her report to them.
"She made clear in the statement that she was reporting serious sexual abuse over a long period of time that had had a profound effect on her," Holmes said in a reasons for judgment. "I find [it] unremarkable that for the most part she did not set out in that statement the physical details of how the sexual assaults took place."
Holmes issued her verdict in mid-February. The man, whose name cannot be printed under a court-ordered publication ban against information that can identify the victim, has not yet been sentenced.
