A Quebec man is on trial this week for alleged sexual assault on his adopted daughter. According to the woman’s account in court, he went so far as to have her prescribed the contraceptive pill after suggesting that it was “much more pleasant” to assault her without a condom.
The plaintiff in this case explained during her testimony at the opening of the trial Monday that she was very close to her adoptive father. She did not speak French when she arrived.
“He was my only trusted person, a figure I respected a lot. I think she was the only person I received love from. And I loved him too, but like a parent,” confided the young woman.
We will withhold certain details of the story in order to protect her identity, since a court order prohibits giving any information that would allow her to be identified, but the young woman was largely dependent on her adoptive father.
She said the attacks began with touching when she was entering adolescence.
Her voice trembling, she described to Judge Steve Magnan events that were said to be so numerous that she “could never count them.”
Photo Agence QMI, MARCEL TREMBLAY
Morning after pill
According to her testimony, the sixty-year-old often lay down behind her when they watched films. Then he started to flatter her, kissing her on the neck, then on the mouth. Then came touching of the genitals and digital penetration.
“This was before full relationships. I would say I was 13 during that time,” she explained.
She was 14 years old during the first alleged full relationship. During another alleged attack, the young woman said she remembered that the condom had torn and that her adoptive father had taken her to the pharmacy to take the morning after pill.
“When we came back, he thought the pill was going to take effect right away because that evening, for the first time, he penetrated me without a condom,” she recalled, swallowing a sob.
“More enjoyable” without a condom
At the age of “14 or 15”, the accused even took her to see a doctor on his own initiative to obtain a prescription for the contraceptive pill.
“After the condom broke and he had sex [non protégées] with me on the morning after pill, he suggested to me that it was much more pleasant,” said the complainant, in an emotional story, but always in control and above all, full of details.
“I just had to say that I was having sex with a friend, a boyfriend, and that I would like to not use a condom.”
The complainant, now in her thirties, explained that the accused would have gone so far as to find excuses for her to sometimes accompany him to work, on night shifts. On one of these occasions, he allegedly forced her to perform oral sex on him during his break.
Even in his native country
The attacks were even carried to her country of origin, while she was visiting her biological family with her adoptive parents.
“My mother and my aunt were in the house,” she said, saying that someone then knocked on the bedroom door. He finished quickly. […] I went out and told my mother a lie.”
The defense began cross-examining the complainant on Monday afternoon, raising certain contradictions between her testimony and her past statements during the preliminary investigation or with investigators. Defense questions will continue Tuesday. The trial is scheduled for four days.
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