April 18, 2008
Nunavut woman breaks down at second rape trial for Ottawa man
“I want to go home. Don’t ask me any more questions.”
A Nunavut woman left an Ottawa courtroom in tears last week while testifying for a second time at the re-trial of a man charged with sexually assaulting her in 2006.
The 26-year-old woman broke down repeatedly during questioning April 9 and eventually demanded an end to the proceedings, the Ottawa Citizen reported.
"I want to go home right now," the newspaper quoted her as saying. The woman cannot be named because of a publication ban.
Gideon Antonatos, 24, of Ottawa, faces a charge of sexual assault causing bodily harm. The Crown alleges that the assault occurred in mid-February of 2006 inside the bathroom of a rooming house on Bruyere Street, just blocks from Parliament Hill.
The man's first trial on the charge in Ottawa ended in a mistrial on Sept. 20, 2007, when a 12-person jury could not agree on a verdict.
During Antonatos's second trial, which started earlier this month, the Nunavut woman sobbed during questioning from Crown lawyers. At one point the woman refused to answer questions about what happened in the rooming house where the sexual assault is alleged to have occurred.
"Disgusting," the Ottawa Sun quoted her as saying. "I want to go home. I want to go home right now. Don't ask me any more questions."
The woman gave most of her evidence in Inuktitut, through an interpreter, and some in English.
On Monday, Justice Charles Hackland dismissed the jury at the request of the defence, meaning Antonatos will now be tried by a judge sitting alone.
Crown lawyers Walter Devenz and Qajaq Robinson, of Iqaluit, now say they'll seek to have past evidence from previous statements and testimony introduced in court, because they don't believe the woman can continue to testify.
"If the court deems that she's incapable of testifying further then she will not be cross-examined [by defence counsel]," said Robinson, who speaks Inuktitut and is helping Crown prosecutors in Ottawa with the case.
Arguments about whether the woman's previous statements can be admitted in the trial were to have started April 15. Robinson said those arguments could continue into next week.
"It's in the judge's hands," she said. "He might decide on the spot, he might reserve his decision."
According to local press reports, the woman, who's from an unidentified "small community" in Nunavut, was in Ottawa in February, 2006, for a job seminar. The community can't be named because it could identify the woman, Robinson said.
On Feb.14, the woman went out for drinks with friends at two downtown pubs. The woman drank enough to become "pretty loaded," Devenz said.
The woman asked staff at the Rainbow Bistro to call a cab for her, but the cab never arrived. Instead, a car containing three men pulled up, and the woman got in, believing she'd be driven to her hotel in exchange for money.
But the car stopped outside a building that wasn't her hotel. When she asked the men what was happening, they said they had to pick something up, the Ottawa Citizen reported.
The woman eventually found herself in a bathroom in a rooming house on Bruyere Street, where one of the men, not Antonatos, tried to force her to perform oral sex on him.
When she fled the bathroom, she allegedly asked one of the men for help. Instead, she ended up back in the bathroom with him, where the man is alleged to have pulled her pants down and sexually assaulted her, the Ottawa Sun reported.
