 | Home page |  | Text size |  | E-mail this page |
Dettah chief on trial Edward Sangris accused of sexually assaulting former band office employee between 1986 and 1990, and 1994 to 1996
Graeme McNaughton
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, June 26, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A former band office employee testified at the trial of Dettah Chief Edward Sangris' yesterday that she was subjected to around 40 sexual assaults while Sangris was a Yellowknives Dene band councillor in the 1980s and 1990s.
The woman testified in NWT Supreme Court that Sangris would approach her from behind, and would touch her breasts and between her legs during two time periods, between 1986 and 1990, and from 1994 to 1996.
Sangris has been charged with two counts of sexual assault and one count of overcoming resistance in connection with the allegations.
Duane Praught, the Crown prosecutor, said the assaults took place in the band office in the early hours of the morning, when the complainant would have been working alone. She testified she came in one hour early to clean the office and have coffee and tea made for her co-workers when they arrived.
The woman testified she purposely made sure she worked near a window in the band office, hoping greater visibility would dissuade Sangris from assaulting her more severely.
The complainant testified she started keeping a record of the alleged sexual assaults in 1988. She said she was assaulted around 40 times.
During his opening argument, Eamon O'Keefe, Sangris' attorney, said the woman was never at the band office before it opened at 9 a.m. and that his client never had keys to access the office, which would have been locked at that hour.
"(Sangris) would have no business even being there," said O'Keefe, a defense attorney from Edmonton.
O'Keefe painted the woman as rude and short-tempered, and said she allegedly pursued Sangris for a relationship, but when the married man rebuffed her efforts, she fabricated the claims.
During her testimony the woman also accused Sangris of stalking her and making late night phone calls to her home in 1996. It was at this point she said that she informed Jonas Sangris, then the chief of Dettah and Edward Sangris' brother, of the alleged assaults. She testified that she told the former chief that unless something was done about the assaults, she would go to police.
O'Keefe said the current chief at Dettah was unaware of the allegations until 2011, when the woman filed a complaint with police about the alleged sexual assaults.
There were other issues between the woman and Edward Sangris, said O'Keefe, including a land dispute in 2010, when construction began on a new house adjacent to her'. The woman testified that she was not consulted in regards to the new building.
The trial is scheduled to continue until Friday.
| 
