Court told of other suspects
Trial of former RCMP officer accused of molesting five-year-old girl began Monday
Meagan Leonard
Northern News Services
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A woman who says her daughter was sexually assaulted by former RCMP officer Colin Allooloo when she was five years old admitted in court Tuesday that the girl's older brother and his friend had also been suspects at one time.
Allooloo's trial began Monday in NWT Supreme Court in Yellowknife. He has pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual assault and one count of touching a minor for sexual purposes stemming from an incident alleged to have occurred in Inuvik between September 2010 and May 2011. The girl he is accused of molesting is now 11 years old and was not in court when her mother testified.
The former stand-in for Arctic Air star Adam Beach looked visibly uncomfortable as the girl's mother took the stand and described the demeanor of her young daughter at the time of the alleged incident. Taking notes, Allooloo barely looked up as Crown prosecutor Wendy Miller questioned the woman about her household and family dynamic.
The testimony took an unexpected turn during cross-examination when defense lawyer Jay Bran pointed out that two other possible suspects had been named in the woman's original statement to RCMP in 2014 - the girl's older brother, who was 18 at the time, and a friend of the family who had stayed with them on occasion, whom the woman had told police resembled Allooloo.
"People would come over who did not have permission. My son's friends would come over when I was not there," the woman testified. "One friend had camped over, he was shorter and stockier and looks kind of like (Allooloo)."
Bran asked why she had printed out Facebook photos of the friend and gave them to police.
"My mind reached beyond to look at any and all possibilities," she said. "I was not focused."
In her statement to police, Bran said the woman described her teenage son as "sick" and asked what she meant by that.
She replied he had been having difficulty staying in school and began partying a lot and using marijuana. She said he became reclusive and was angry and difficult to deal with at the time so she kicked him out of the house. She said he moved out permanently in the fall of 2011.
"He was causing trouble and I was trying to straighten him out but wasn't successful," she said. "I referred to him as 'sick' because he couldn't follow the rules. He isolated himself and wrote us all off as family members and didn't speak to me - I would think that would be not well."
She said there had been a number of people coming and going through their home at the time, adding, travel for her job meant she was away once or twice a month.
She said the girl's grandmother, who regularly cared for her daughter, originally brought the allegations to her attention but did not name anyone specific. Bran asked why the grandmother had not initially named Allooloo as the culprit.
"I think she was very upset and having a difficult time - she may have been in transit with (my daughter) and maybe didn't want to say it with her nearby," she said, adding the woman later revealed Allooloo's name in a text message.
A divorce from her ex-husband in 2007 had upset her daughter, the woman explained. She said the girl had difficulty sleeping on her own and would regularly seek out others and crawl into their beds or ask them to sleep next to her. She described one particular incident where she returned home late at night from a work trip to find her daughter visibly distraught and inconsolable.
"She came out of her room and was wide awake, very upset and crying - asking me to come sleep with her ... she wouldn't calm down," she said. "She was grabbing me and holding on to me and wouldn't let me go ... something about it always bugged me."
She said her daughter regularly requested to stay with her grandmother or aunt while she was away for work and said she missed her father.
"Her first reaction was always to ask to go stay with her grandma," she said. "She never fussed about going there."
The complainant, now 11 years old, is expected to testify later this week accompanied by a social worker. Her grandmother is also expected to take the stand.
Allooloo resigned from the RCMP in October 2010 after 12 years on the force following his conviction for assaulting a youth locked up in Fort Simpson RCMP detachment cells in 2006. Allooloo had pepper-sprayed the 16-year-old prisoner from the underneath the door of his cell. He was serving at the Inuvik detachment at the time of his conviction in 2009.
Allooloo's sexual assault trial is being heard by a 12-person jury comprised of seven women and five men. The trial is expected to last three or four days.
