Suspect in sex assault relentless, court hears

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This article was published 05/11/2019 (2330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man accused of sexually assaulting two women in their St. James-area homes minutes apart “would stop at nothing to get what he wanted, no matter the obstacle,” a jury was told.

“The case you are going to hear… is about relentless persistence,” Crown attorney Carolyn Reimer told jurors in the trial of James Stewart.

Stewart, 48, has pleaded not guilty to break and enter and sexual assault in connection to the July 11, 2018, attacks.

The court heard Stewart allegedly assaulted the first woman as she lay passed out in her bed, before being forced out of the house by the women’s sister, only to break into the house next door, where he is accused of assaulting a second woman as she slept in bed with her partner and two young children.

“He was not deterred by a lack of invitation, by a lack of privacy or even a lack of consciousness,” Reimer said in an opening address outlining the Crown’s case.

“He wasn’t deterred after he was caught the first time, and he wasn’t even deterred by the presence of young children,” she said. “He persisted until somebody stopped him.”

Testifying Monday, the first woman told jurors Stewart, whom she had met a dozen times or so around the neighbourhood, arrived uninvited late in the evening, as she and her sister hosted a backyard gathering.

The woman said she felt uncomfortable by his presence, but “didn’t want to be rude” and let him stay.

“I could tell he was drunk,” she said. “He was kind of staggering as he was walking toward us.”

The woman said she passed out in bed fully clothed with a male friend around 1 a.m., and remembered nothing more until waking up the next morning naked from the waist down.

After the woman expressed concern “something happen(ed) to (her) last night,” the woman’s sister told her she had interrupted Stewart assaulting her as she slept.

The woman’s sister testified she had just returned from the vendor to pick up more beer, when she looked into her sister’s bedroom to see a man crouching naked on the bed, sexually assaulting her sister as a friend lay passed out beside her.

“I yelled, ‘What are you doing?’ That’s when he looked at me and I saw who he was,” the sister said.

In the commotion that followed, the passed-out male woke up and ran out of the house, leaving the sister to force the accused off the bed and out of the house, court was told.

“He was fumbling around looking for his clothes and I was yelling at him to get out,” she said.

“He kept apologizing, said he loved her. I pretty much had to push him every step of the way.”

Once outside, a male friend helped force the man into the back lane, where, after a couple of minutes, he walked away in the direction of his neighbourhood home, the woman testified.

Prosecutors allege the man didn’t go home, and instead broke into the house next door, where he stripped down and sexually assaulted a woman as she slept in bed with her partner and two young children.

“The woman did slowly wake up, assuming it had to be her partner who was touching her,” Reimer said.

Hearing a noise, the woman’s partner turned on a light, exposing the intruder, Reimer said. “In the light, (the woman) saw it wasn’t her partner and kicked at the stranger.”

The woman called 911, as her partner held the intruder and beat him on the head and body.

Police arrived 10 minutes later to find Stewart still in the bedroom, naked and injured, Reimer said.

The trial resumes today.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @deanatlarge