A B.C. Supreme Court Justice found a Prince George man guilty of aggravated sexual assault Friday after DNA found on the victim of a 2001 attack near Connaught Hill was determined to match a sample from the assailant that had been submitted to the national databank.
A case against William Garfield Garnot, 53, was launched in April 2010 after DNA taken from the inside crotch of the woman's jeans was found to match that taken from Garnot in connection with a 2008 sexual assault investigation in High Prairie, Alta.
During a trial by judge alone, Garnot testified that he never attacked the woman but rather had sex with her a few hours before the Nov. 21, 2001 attack, maintaining he took up her offer to masturbate him in exchange for $20 while in a van parked in a downtown alley.
She touched herself with the same hand, Garnot contended, thus getting his semen onto the crotch of her jeans.
Garnot also asserted he has had difficulty getting an erection ever since he was kicked in the genitals with a steel-toed boot at age 17 during an assault and therefore could not have left the injuries the woman suffered when she was attacked.
However, Justice Terence Schultes found Garnot's claims not credible.
During the trial, a doctor who examined Garnot and witnesses from Garnot's past took the stand to testify that he could get an erection, the exception being his current wife, who Schultes found was inconsistent in her testimony and would say anything to help her husband.
Schultes found particularly questionable the detail that the woman swore when she got sperm on her hand.
"Whether she was a professional sex trade worker or just a woman seeking to make $20 opportunistically, it makes no sense that such a person would express such a fastidious degree of dismay," Schultes said.
Atlhough the the DNA was found to be Garnot's, Schultes noted the original evidence from the assault was thrown out in 2003 to make room in the exhibits section at the Prince George RCMP detachment.
Schultes said the development raised concerns for him about whether Garnot's Charter rights had been violated and whether the case was substantially affected. But in the end, he concluded that "even giving the loss of this evidence its maximum possible weight, I find that it does not lead to a reasonable doubt."
The woman testified she had left a downtown nightspot where she had been drinking after it had closed, when she asked a man passing by if he knew where she could get a drink. When he said yes, they walked toward Connaught Hill and then onto a narrow trail where the woman was struck with something like a board and knocked unconscious, the court had heard.
When she regained conciousness, she found herself lying face down on the ground with her pants off and the man lying on top of her having sexual intercourse. When police were called to the area, one of the woman's socks was found in the middle of Connaught Drive at Norwood Street, near a heavily-wooded vacant lot.
An abrasions and lesions were found on and around her genitalia, and she suffered fractures to her nose and facial bone that a doctor found would have "taken a strong physical blow to inflict."
Garnot will be sentenced at a later date.
