Man pleads not guilty as rape trial begins

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This article was published 18/06/2017 (2497 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg chef is standing trial on an allegation he raped a 21-year-old woman a decade ago.

Rob Thomas, 39, pleaded not guilty to sexual assault Monday as his Court of Queen’s Bench trial began in front of Justice David Kroft.

The Crown’s case, put forward by prosecutor Danielle Simard, alleges Thomas raped the woman, who he knew through a mutual friend, in a downtown Winnipeg parkade stairwell Aug. 25, 2007, after the two left a wedding reception and went for a walk.

Thomas’s defence team — lawyers Hymie Weinstein and Lisa LaBossiere — suggested it was the accuser who initiated the sexual encounter, and Thomas stopped it as soon as she told him to.

“That’s not what happened,” the now-31-year-old woman said in response to LaBossiere’s suggestion during cross-examination Monday.

The woman can’t be identified under a publication ban.

During her testimony, she acknowledged she had been drinking alcohol that evening and was flirting with Thomas at the wedding reception. When he accompanied her outside and they walked to a parking lot, they talked, kissed and laughed, she testified. But she said she felt “uneasy” when he took her by the hand and led her down a stairwell she believed connected to an underground parkade. She said he pushed her onto the concrete stairs and raped her.

She didn’t report the assault to the police until December 2014, after she said she was triggered by an incident that year in which another man groped her outside a beer vendor. She said she started going to therapy and decided to contact police about the 2007 incident. She testified there are still chunks of time that evening she doesn’t remember, but “certain things did become more clear” after she relived the event as part of her cognitive behavioural therapy treatment.

The defence questioned why the complainant didn’t tell her best friend she’d been assaulted that evening, and only told her a few days afterward she felt Thomas had “taken advantage” of her.

At the time, it didn’t register she’d been raped, the complainant replied.

“I do think it has something to do with shock and forgetting certain aspects (of the situation) after trauma,” she said on the stand.

Thomas, a well-known private chef who has routinely made appearances on local TV and radio stations to share cooking tips and talk about local cuisine, as well as writing print columns on the subject, has denied the allegations.

When contacted by the Free Press after his arrest in 2015, he said he did nothing wrong. He remains on bail and was present in court with several supporters Monday.

The Crown expects to call three other witnesses before it closes its case.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay