The teenage complainant at a Halifax sexual assault trial says she thought she was just supposed to collect money for a man who had brought her to the city from Pictou County when she went to a hotel room on the night of Feb. 21, 2017.
The Crown alleges a financial adviser from Maryland had sex with the 15-year-old girl in his room at the Halifax Marriott Harbourfront Hotel after responding to an online ad.
Paul Christopher Coburn, 47, who now lives in Oakville, Ont., is charged with sexual assault, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, obtaining sexual services for consideration, and obtaining sexual services from a person under the age of 18 for consideration.
Coburn’s trial got underway Tuesday in Halifax provincial court in front of Judge Elizabeth Buckle.
Girl takes stand, hides identity
The complainant, now 17, took the stand Wednesday. The judge allowed the girl to testify behind a screen, with an 18-year-old friend at her side as a support person.
Crown attorney Carla Ball requested the special arrangements, saying the complainant was emotionally fragile and “extremely fearful.”
Coburn’s name surfaced during an investigation into an Upper Hammonds Plains man arrested on pimping-related charges, including human trafficking. Coburn was arrested entering the country at the Toronto airport in July 2017 and brought to Nova Scotia to face charges.
Leeanthon Oliver, 34, pleaded guilty last September to two charges involving the girl — human trafficking a person under the age of 18 and sexual interference. Oliver also admitted committing three offences involving another girl — receiving material benefits from human trafficking, sexual assault and making child pornography.
Oliver was sentenced to eight years in prison less credit for time on remand.
The complainant testified she began communicating with Oliver on Snapchat in early 2017. She said he told her he was 18.
She said they met up on the afternoon of Feb. 21 in the parking lot at a McDonald’s restaurant in New Glasgow. She said she climbed into the back seat of a Ford SUV. Oliver was in the front passenger seat and a man known as Terry was driving the vehicle.
The girl said they drove to a house on Pockwock Road in Upper Hammonds Plains, where Oliver took her to a room in the basement that had a mattress on the cement floor.
She said Oliver was on his phone and laptop over the next few hours and told her they were going to make a lot of money. Asked what she thought that meant, she tearfully replied: “That I wasn’t going home.”
The complainant said Oliver set up a meeting between her and the accused at the hotel.
“He told me I was gonna go get some money,” she said. “I thought he meant I was just going to get money.”
The girl said Oliver and Terry dropped her off at the hotel and she went upstairs to Room 509, where Coburn told her to remove her clothes and lie on the bed.
She said Coburn got her to perform oral sex and then had vaginal intercourse with her until he noticed she was bleeding and stopped.
She said he went into the bathroom and she got dressed. She said he gave her money before she left, but she couldn’t remember how much.
She said Oliver took her back to the basement on Pockwock Road, where he drank liquor, grabbed at her body and tried to get her to have sex with him. She said she resisted Oliver’s efforts and eventually escaped after he fell asleep on the mattress beside her.
Defence points out inconsistencies
On cross-examination, defence lawyer Joel Pink asked the complainant about differences between statements she gave police in February 2017 and her testimony Wednesday.
For example, the girl told police that Oliver went into the hotel with her and was actually in the room when she had sex with the man. In one of the statements, she said she had sex with a chubby white man while a really tall, skinny black man watched, and that both men gave Oliver money before they left.
She told Pink she doesn’t remember much about that night and has pushed it to the back of her head as a coping mechanism. She said she’s been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Pink noted she didn’t mention oral sex in the first statement she gave police.
“I didn’t want to say everything that he did,” she said through tears. “I didn’t want my mom to know. I didn’t want the news to find out. I didn’t want anybody to know. … I was a little girl.
“I’m trying to answer you as best as I can answer you and as truthfully as I can answer you, which is probably why things have changed.”
The girl said Oliver didn’t tell her at first how she was going to make money.
“It was fairly clear to me after what happened at the Marriott that night how I was going to make money for him,” she said. “He was going to make me sell myself.”
She admitted that before they drove to the hotel, Oliver said “make yourself pretty,” so she fixed her makeup and took braids out of her hair.
Security video shows the complainant getting out of an SUV and entering the hotel Feb. 21 at about 11:15 p.m. and leaving at about 11:50 p.m.
Someone called 911 on Feb. 23, 2017, at 2:04 a.m. advising that a girl was locked in the basement of a house on Pockwock Road. The caller said the girl had claimed in a Snapchat conversation that a pimp was making her do things she didn’t want to do and she was scared.
An RCMP officer discovered the girl walking along Pockwock Road with no shoes on at about 2:30 a.m. and drove her to the detachment in Upper Tantallon, where a statement was taken.
Oliver was transported to the courthouse from an Ontario prison to testify at the trial, but neither the Crown nor the defence will be calling him as a witness.
“We … do not need him for the court process,” Ball told the court Wednesday.
“I met with him his morning,” Pink said of Oliver. “He absolutely refuses to talk.”
The complainant will be back in the witness box Thursday.
RELATED:
