The Peter MacKinnon Building at the University of Saskatchewan is a National Historic Site of Canada and the administrative centre for the campus, it opened in 1913. One of the two men accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a University of Saskatchewan off-campus residence has been found guilty after a judge ruled his story was “an adolescent fantasy.”David Stobbe/The Globe and Mail
One of the two men accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a University of Saskatchewan off-campus residence has been found guilty after a judge ruled his story was "an adolescent fantasy," CKOM reports.
Butchang Nkem, 25, and Farouq Sadiq, 29, were arrested following a complaint by a 20-year-old woman after a New Year's Eve party in Saskatoon in 2012.
Nkem was convicted on the charge, but the judge found Sadiq not guilty, ruling that he had an honest but mistaken belief of consensual sex.
The woman testified at trial that the two men had sex with her in a bedroom after they'd left a celebration at a bar.
But she said that because she had been drugged, she couldn't remember everything.
"People need to be aware that they cannot violate the sexual integrity of another person. They need to be educated on what that kind of conduct is," Crown prosecutor Buffy Rodgers said after the verdict Tuesday.
Lawyers for both men attacked the woman's credibility during the trial, suggesting that she was lying out of shame for having consensual sex during a night of drinking and doing cocaine.
Sadiq's lawyer, Mark Vanstone, said his client never denied having sex with the woman and pointed to witness testimony that she had been intimate with Sadiq throughout the night.
He also said surveillance footage from the foyer of the apartment building didn't appear to show the woman in any sort of intoxicated or incapacitated state.
Lawyer Kim Armstrong said Nkem testified it was the woman who initiated sex when he went into the bedroom after Sadiq had left. He said he found her naked on the bed and that she told him to have sex with her.
But Court of Queen's Bench Justice Richard Danyliuk said Nkem's story of being seduced by the woman after he went into one of the apartment bedrooms to get a camera was nothing but a fantasy.
"To enter the room for the camera after the person inside had just had sex with his friend makes no sense," Danyliuk wrote in his decision.
Although Danyliuk did not find any proof that the woman's drink was spiked, he ruled she was incapable of consenting "at the times the sexual activity occurred" because of alcohol and cocaine consumption.
Nkem will remain out of custody on conditions until his sentencing hearing on Oct. 31.
Rodgers said the case has been difficult for the woman.
"It's had a tremendous impact on her life. She is a very brave young woman who came forward under some tough circumstances," the prosecutor said Tuesday.