SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A man stood in Supreme Court on Friday and pleaded guilty to raping two of his sisters, sexually assaulting one, and using a gun while assaulting one - all of which happened more than 25 years ago in Tuktoyaktuk.

The offender, a 53-year-old overweight man with slicked-back white hair and a white moustache, stood up and pleaded guilty as his charges were read aloud to the Yellowknife court.

Crown prosecutor Shannon Smallwood then read the agreed statement of facts, which included sexual assaults and common assaults for which no charges were laid.

The case was adjourned until today, Nov. 15, for sentencing.

The offender was the eldest of several siblings. They all slept in the same room for many years while growing up together in Tuktoyaktuk. The offender began his assaults during the early 1970s while he was only 12 years old. He began by touching his 10-year-old sister under the covers, his attacks escalating until she was 17-years-old.

She tried to tell her mother, who called her a liar and ignored the complaints. He later raped his younger sister in a field while punching her face and smothering her. She thinks he may have raped her up to 10 times over four years.

At age 16, the offender began assaulting another sister, also while she was close to 10 years old. He asked her to come lay by him. He put his hand on her mouth, took off her clothes and raped her. She returned to bed and cried. When she told her mother, she got a similar angry response.

"Her mother didn't believe her. She beat her up and told her not to tell anyone," said Smallwood, who added that the offender and his sisters shared a biological father, but came from different mothers.

Later, in the early 1980s, the second sister saw her mother being beat up by another woman and fought off the attacker. The offender came home drunk and angry that the sister had beat up the other woman, and he hit her. She escaped into the bedroom and got the other siblings to hide under a bed. The offender came in and pointed a gun at her, then fired a shot into the roof.

At 17 years old the offender began sexually assaulting a third sister, who was nine at the time.

The offender would come into her bedroom, which was separate from his at the time, and touch her or have intercourse with her. She suffered these assaults until she was 20 years old. She got much the same reaction from her mother as did her sisters.

"Her mother kicked her in the stomach and told her to leave her (the mother) alone," said Smallwood.

One night in particular illustrates the damage the offender, her brother, did to his sister's life. She was a teenager and he gave her some alcohol when they were sitting together on a couch. She knew immediately where it was leading - he raped her, then he passed out.

She got up and grabbed a knife from the kitchen. She wanted to kill him. She held the knife to him as he slept but she couldn't bring herself to do it, so she just sat and kept drinking. When he woke up, she told him the sexual assaults had to stop or she'd go to the police. He bribed her with money and his snowmobile keys so she wouldn't go. She thought she'd use the snowmobile to try to escape, though she was extremely drunk.

She woke up in the RCMP detachment. She'd crashed the snowmobile into two children, killing one.

The younger brother of the offender was watching the proceedings via video-link from North Slave Correctional Centre, and told the court he would like their real names printed after Justice John Vertes ordered a publication ban in order to protect the victims' identities.

"It would be nice to let the truth out and let everyone know what happened," he said.

He witnessed the crimes committed on his sisters and, according to the agreed facts, was beaten on occasion by his older brother, though no charges were laid for those assaults.

"Everyone said we were lying," he said.

Smallwood said she would speak with the other victims about the publication ban.

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