Brother and sister testify grandma abused them

BRANDON — Two children described instances in which their grandmother allegedly sexually abused them while watching TV in her bedroom, during a trial in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench on Monday.

The children — an eight-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy, who appeared in court by video — said the abuse occurred more than once.

A 51-year-old woman from a rural community in southwestern Manitoba pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual interference before Judge Sandra Zinchuk at the start of a three-day trial.

A publication ban protects the identity of the children, which means the accused cannot be named. The Crown says the incidents occurred between August 2019 and December 2021.

The girl testified from a separate room in the courthouse, sitting next to a victim services support worker while holding a plush white rabbit. She held on to the stuffed animal’s ears as she described how her grandmother used her hand to touch her “front and back.”

Crown attorney Reid Girard asked the girl whether she was touched on her butt and the part where “pee comes out” and she answered “yes.”

When asked how many times her grandma had touched her, she said, “I don’t know, but it was more than once.”

She said her grandma would go underneath her clothes to touch her bare skin. During the incidents, her grandmother wore clothes and never said anything after touching her, she testified.

The girl said she was only touched in a sexual manner when she was in her grandmother’s bedroom. Sometimes her brother was in the living room when it happened, but there were other times when the grandmother touched both of them in the bed as they watched TV together, she said.

Defence lawyer Anthony Dawson showed her a transcript of a March 2023 interview she had with a child advocate at the Toba Centre for Children and Youth in Winnipeg. Dawson said her account of what happened had changed; she originally said she had been touched once on the butt, but now says her grandmother had touched her several times.

Parts of the boy’s interview with the child advocate were shown in court. The boy — who was eight years old at the time — said his grandmother had touched his butt “more than one time” and then would smell her hand after.

He described an instance where he was watching TV next to his grandmother in her bedroom and she put her hands in his pants and started “rubbing.”

His grandmother called him “stinky” afterwards, he told the interviewer.

The boy said he saw their grandma touch his sister twice when they stayed overnight for a sleepover.

He said his grandmother’s clothes remained on and that he never touched her in that way.

The boy said he told his mother what happened because “he didn’t like it.”

During his testimony, the boy said the incidents would happen every time he went to his grandmother’s house when his parents weren’t around.

Girard asked if his grandmother was working at his elementary school at the same time these assaults were taking place and he replied, “I think so.”

Dawson asked both children if their mother or anyone else had told them to lie about what happened, and they each answered no.

The children’s 32-year-old mother was the Crown’s final witness. She testified her kids stopped wanting to go to school because they didn’t want to see their grandmother.

The mother said she kept asking her children why they didn’t want to see their grandmother, to which her son blurted out one evening at supper in January 2023 that the grandmother had put her hands down his sister’s pants.

Her son eventually told her that the same had happened to him, she said.

“He was shy, embarrassed, quiet” and “worried he did something wrong,” she said, while wiping away tears.

She spoke to the RCMP and Child and Family Services.

“In my statement, I said … ‘I’m here today because my kids told me they were being abused by my mother, but I believe that they are being abused because she did it to me, too.’”

When the defence suggested she had asked her kids to lie about what happened, she answered, “Absolutely not.”

— Brandon Sun