Editor’s note: The following story contains graphic details and strong language heard in court that may not be suitable for some readers.
A 54-year-old man who was invited into the home of an old friend to ease the burden of caring for her ailing husband has been convicted of sexually assaulting the couple’s teenage daughter.
The man showed little emotion after Ontario Court Madam Justice Nancy Dawson found him guilty in the judge-alone trial at the Barrie courthouse on Friday.
Any information that could identify the 17-year-old victim is subject to a publication ban.
“There is nothing that leaves me with reasonable doubt and (the accused) is guilty as charged,” said Dawson.
Court heard evidence that the girl was assaulted on Oct. 10, 2023. The girl testified that the man forced himself upon her, digitally penetrated her and performed oral sex on her against her will.
The man claimed the assault never happened and the girl was motivated to lie because she resented his growing relationship with her mother.
Dawson accepted the girl’s evidence and rejected virtually every aspect of the man’s defence.
“I do not believe his evidence,” said Dawson, who, by contrast, said she found the girl to be credible and forthright in her testimony, which lasted almost two hours on the stand.
The girl and the accused were the only two witnesses called to testify.
Court heard how the victim had encouraged her mother to connect to people on social media to help find assistance around the home as she became the full-time caregiver for her husband. She was soon put in touch with the man, who she once worked with as a young adult.
Court heard that the man was given a bedroom in the house adjacent to the girl's and would stay overnight as he wished.
But the couple’s children soon grew leery of the arrangement. The man had his own physical issues, was on disability and rarely did any significant work around the home.
The tension grew more acute when the man and the girl’s mother apparently grew closer.
Dawson said that that hostility, which the girl acknowledged she had toward the man, was understandable and likely because he was starting to act as a stepfather figure toward her, a role she didn’t want or need in her life.
The judge said the man’s expanding role in the girl’s life was clearly unwelcome.
“She told him, ‘I don’t need a fucking stepfather,’” said Dawson, quoting the girl’s earlier evidence.
Court heard one particularly telling and sad aspect to the case: that that the girl’s father, who had effectively lost his ability to speak, was still able to voice his objection to the man being in his home, managing to utter his name in disgust.
The man’s intuition proved tragically accurate.
After the assault, his daughter immediately reported it to a teacher, who was also her guidance counsellor. That official alerted Barrie police, who were waiting for the girl when she had arrived at school the next morning, driven there by a friend after the man had made an unwelcome visit into her bedroom to wake her up.
That bedroom visit was cited as clear evidence of the man’s guilt.
“(Waking her up) makes no sense,” said Dawson, because the girl had been getting up on her own to get ready for school for years by that point.
By comparison, the man often slept well past noon, court heard.
His actions that morning was the behaviour of a guilty man, Dawson said.
A pre-sentence report will be presented to Dawson on April 25 in Bradford. Sentencing submissions will follow.
