Jorge Barrera
APTN National News
The sound of a weeping woman’s voice filled the Gatineau, Que., courtroom Tuesday, on the second day of suspended Senator Patrick Brazeau’s trial on assault and sexual assault charges.
The Crown played two recordings of 911 calls made shortly after 9 a.m. on Feb. 7, 2013, from the rented Gatineau house where Brazeau lived with a woman.
The second day of the trial began with a continuation of the victim’s testimony of the alleged break-up attack she endured at the hands of Brazeau, who was still a Conservative Senator at the time.
Brazeau has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The 911 recordings were of a woman’s voice who, through sobs, said her partner had assaulted her and she needed police help.
“My (partner) hit me,” said the woman.
-snip-
“Is he in the house?” said the male police officer who answered the second 911 call.
“Yes,” said the woman, between sobs.
“What’s his name,” said the officer.
“Patrick Brazeau,” said the woman.
As the audio played, the victim began to cry quietly as she stood facing the judge, Brazeau and his lawyers to her right, the Crown prosecutors to her left.
The victim testified before the Crown played the 911 recordings that she went to the kitchen to call police after Brazeau sexually assaulted her with his finger a second time while she was on her hands and knees on the stairs. She said Brazeau had his arm around her neck and used his fingers to penetrate her buttocks area. The victim said the land-line telephone in the kitchen was disconnected and then she went to the bathroom to call the police with her cell phone. She didn’t know who disconnected the land-line.
The first call from 911 at 9:04 a.m. was cut short. The 911 operator asked , “what is your emergency?”
The woman on the other end said, “Is this the police?”
Then the line went dead. The 911 operator called back and it rang about 8 times with no answer.
The victim testified she didn’t remember making the first phone call.
She called 911 back at 9:06 a.m. and her called was answered by the male police officer.
The Crown asked the victim what she felt while listing to the 911 call.
“It made me relive what I was feeling that day, the fear,” she said.
The Crown submitted photographs taken of the victim’s injuries shortly after police arrived at the home. Judge Valmont Beaulieu ruled that the photos of injuries to the woman’s buttocks area could not be published by the media.
The jeans the victim wore that day were also submitted as evidence and the victim held them in her hands. The button to fasten the jeans was missing and the zipper was broken, she said.
A button was found on the floor by police. The victim has testified Brazeau forcibly yanked down her pants to sexually assault her.
The victim also testified how she found her ripped purple turtleneck hidden beneath Brazeau’s dresser in the bedroom after she returned to the house with two officers to retrieve some of her belongings later that fateful Thursday.
The victim testified Monday she was holding the sweater in her hands when Brazeau allegedly attacked her. She said Brazeau ripped the sweater. The sweater was entered as evidence Monday along with a ripped piece of cloth. She said the sweater was left on the stairs after the attack.
The victim also told the court she deleted intimate videos of her and Brazeau from a video camera when she returned to the bedroom with police at the time she found the sweater hidden.
Tuesday began with the Crown asking her to draw, roughly, the places in the house where she said Brazeau attacked her. With black and pink markers she was asked to mark the places where he sexually assaulted her. She was also asked to draw a stick-man Brazeau to show where he was during the first sexual assault. The Crown also asked the victim to mark with a pink x the place where Brazeau slammed her head against a wall.
The Crown also asked the victim about pictures Brazeau took down from the wall following the alleged attack. The victim said she saw Brazeau take down some of the pictures after she called police. She said she didn’t see him take down the photograph of her, Brazeau and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She also said she didn’t know who ripped the photograph, which has the stamp of the Prime Minister’s Office at the bottom.
The trial continues Tuesday afternoon with more from the victim along with testimony from the two police officers who were first at the home following the 911 call.
@JorgeBarrera
