by Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jul 15/98) - Young witnesses in the Wing Lee trial told the court this week they were lured into having sex by money and gifts -- and the only helping hand reaching out to them.

Nine young women, ranging from 16 to 21 years of age, testified this week about their contact with Lee, 62, up until the time he was arrested on the 24 sex and child pornography charges he is now facing.

Witnesses, appearing on videotapes entered as evidence, were shown short clips of the videos and asked by Crown prosecutor Mark Scrivens to confirm that it was them and Lee in the videos.

All of the girls who testified to having sex with Lee said they were abusing drugs or alcohol, or both, during that period of their lives.

Under cross-examination by Lee's lawyer, Andy Mahar, some admitted that many of the details of their encounters with the accused -- how much they were paid, if Lee offered money before or after sex, their ages at the time sexual encounters, and knowledge of whether or not they were videotaped -- remain vague.

On Friday one woman was questioned about her assertion that Lee provided drugs to her and a friend after they had sex with him.

"When you say it must have come from Mr. Lee, you're assuming it did because neither you nor (the other girl) had cocaine when you got there, is that right?" asked Andrew Mahar.

The witness said she had no memory of Lee actually handing her the cocaine they smoked in the video, but said, "If we had it before we got there we wouldn't have done what we did."

On Monday, Mahar questioned witnesses about Lee's treatment of them.

"Is it true he always treated you kindly?" asked the lawyer.

"Yes he did," responded the witness.

"He bought you gifts and presents and gave you money?"

"Yes," she said.

"Is it true, you were going through a pretty rough time then and Mr. Lee was one of the few people who helped you?"

"Yes," responded the witness.

"And because of that you grew to like him very much, is that right?"

"Yes."

Last Friday as the 10 people directly involved in the hearing of the trial watched a monitor that could not be seen from the gallery, the few members of the public and media in attendance sat in the dimmed courtroom in an eerie silence as the videotaped evidence was played.

Through most of the tapes -- each was recorded in Lee's room -- all that could be heard is a local radio station. In one the sounds of a pornographic movie, later mocked by the girl in the room, could be heard.

During one particularly ironic segment the love ballad "Sometimes when we touch" was playing on the radio.

Lee's gaze rarely turned from the screen during the two and a half hours of video evidence. One hour was played on Thursday before the CBC successfully argued against barring the public from the courtroom during the playing of the tapes.

The tapes are said to show Lee having sex with two girls under 18, another under 16 and another over 18 who, the Crown says, appeared to be unconscious at the time.

In arguing to have the public excluded from the courtroom, Scrivens said the privacy interests of the girls featured in them outweigh the public's right to see them.

In spite of his partial lifting of the ban, NWT Supreme Court Justice John Vertes said he tended to agree with that argument.

"If I were called upon to balance these interests, I would be inclined, in the absence of an agreement between counsels, to uphold my previous decision," said Vertes.

"I have some difficulty with the logic behind this and the objective of this (request to lift the ban and avert the monitors)."

He said there did not appear to him to be any qualitative difference between the public sitting outside the courtroom and not seeing the videos and the public sitting inside the courtroom and not seeing the videos.

The defence begins its case this morning. It has not yet been determined if Lee will testify on his own behalf. If he does, he will also have to answer questions from Scrivens.