Young sex assault victim spent seven years in court, finally moving on
TISDALE, Sask. - To the public, she's known as the 12-year-old aboriginal girl who accused three white men of plying her with beer and trying to have sex with her on a country road in north-central Saskatchewan seven years ago.
She's at the centre of the case which has magnified racial tensions in the province and led to several protests.
It's also a case that is now considered closed.
Following four trials and a series of appeals, Saskatchewan Justice officials announced earlier this month they will not pursue the matter any further.
In the end, one man was convicted of sexual assault but served house arrest instead of jail time. The two others were found not guilty but each had second trials, which resulted in another acquittal and a deadlocked jury.
Now 19, the young woman who can't be named due to a publication ban, leans against a tree in a grassy park near her home, talking about how the decision to climb into a pickup truck with three strange men that night has shaped her adolescent years and changed the course of her life forever.
She dropped out of Grade 7 after classmates learned of the incident and made fun of her. She was soon drinking alcohol to excess. She sliced her left arm with razor blades. She overdosed on pills. She was in and out of psychiatric wards and foster homes.
She also spent all of her teenage years as a witness, testifying in various trials and re-trials against the three men. As an adult, she prefers to sleep during the day because she says scary dreams about the men keep her up at night.
"I always think of that, you know. If that didn't happen, where would I be?" says the woman, tugging the cuffs of her pink hoodie. "Maybe I would have been graduated and doing something with my life right now instead of where I am today. I have to go back and do everything all over again."
It all started when the girl got into an argument with her mother.
She put some clothes and her Bible into a backpack and started walking away from her family's home in Porcupine Plain, Sask., hoping to make it to her cousin's place nearly 300 kilometres southwest in Saskatoon.
Her feet carried her only 10 kilometres before dark to nearby Chelan. She was sitting on the front steps of the local bar when the three men - Dean Edmondson, Jeffrey Kindrat and Jeffrey Brown - all in their early 20s, walked outside. One referred to her as Pocahontas, she says, and they offered her a ride.
She told them she was 14, soon turning 15. They gave her beer, telling her it would make her troubles go away, she says.
Later on the side of the road, she says, the men took turns having sex with her.
She says she told them no, but she was drunk and could barely stand or fight. She was tiny, barely five-feet tall weighing 90 pounds.
The men dropped her off at her friend's house and she was taken to a hospital.
The men told RCMP and testified in court to different versions of what happened that night, either that there were attempts at sexual intercourse or no sexual contact at all.
But they all said the girl was sexually aggressive.
Then there was the evidence that semen found in her underwear did not belong to any of the accused. Instead, it was a likely DNA match to her father. Court heard the girl had confided to a foster mother that her birth father had abused her since she was two.
It was evidence the first jury heard in the trial of Edmondson. Although the jury convicted him of sexual assault, the trial judge sentenced him to two years less a day of house arrest.
In sentencing, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Fred Kovach ruled the girl willingly got in the truck with the men and lied about being 14, the legal age of consent for sex. He also said her childhood abuse could have made her a willing participant.
The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal ruled Kovach made a mistake and Edmondson should have served time behind bars. But the court said he had served nearly all his house arrest, and sending him to prison for the remaining few months would accomplish nothing since he would qualify for early release.
A jury then acquitted Kindrat and Brown, but the Court of Appeal ordered new trials because the judge had not properly instructed the jury. Another jury later found Kindrat not guilty, and the last hung jury led to a mistrial against Brown.
Glen Luther, an associate law professor at the University of Saskatchewan, says he can't recall another court case involving a sexual assault victim as young as 12 having to testify five times against her alleged attackers.
What she went through was "atrocious," he says. But the three men were also put through the ordeal of a drawn out court case, legal bills and public scrutiny.
"I don't mean to compare it to what she's gone through," says Luther.
Attempts to contact Edmondson, Kindrat and Brown through their family and lawyers were unsuccessful.
Although the woman denied her father molested her, others in the family made accusations of their own against her dad.
He later went to court and was found guilty of sexually abusing three nieces and a nephew nearly 30 years ago. He was convicted as a young offender but sentenced as an adult to two years in prison.
The man was never charged with abusing his daughter and she denies there was any abuse.
Her parents were heavy drinkers, she admits, and her father used to beat her mother. But she claims it was another relative who snuck into her bed during their house parties when she was a child. She only recently disclosed this abuse to her mother, she says, and has never pursued legal action against the relative
She says her father is now a "totally different person," and she regularly visits him in prison.
The justice system has disappointed her, she says.
"I'm just tired of those guys winning at everything," she says. "I wouldn't have cared if they didn't get jail... All I ever wanted was for them to apologize."
But the woman says she doesn't like to dwell on the past. She has hope for the future.
She is finishing high school through correspondence and wants to become an RCMP officer, a counsellor, or a court witness co-ordinator.
"There are a lot of native girls that don't go ahead with (court)," she says. "I don't blame them, because it's hard.
"Hopefully, one day, I'll be able to help young girls that it's happened to."
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