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Tisdale Rape
story
Controversial trials
another Saskatchewan disgrace
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injusticebusters has learned that the 12 year old First
Nations complainant in the Tisdale rape case was removed from
her parents' home and placed in foster care almost immediately
after the traumatic assault. Social worker Susan Pasieka was
responsible for the apprehension. injusticebusters is working on a story about Pasieka who as a
history of apprehending FAS foster children and leading them
to make allegations of sexual abuse, using the same methods as
Carol Bunko and Brian
Dueck in the Foster Parent
case and Rod Butler in Martensville.
In discussing the settlement with wrongfully charged Saskatoon
policeman John Popowich, Justice Minister
Chris Axworthy assured the public
these methods were no longer being used. -- Sheila Steele,
Nov. 21, 2002
Trial
coverage
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Preliminary hearing delayed
in Tisdale sex assault case
Feb 13 2002,
cbc
TISDALE, SASK.
- The preliminary hearing in a high-profile sexual assault case
has been delayed, but there are few details about the reason.
Three white
men from Tisdale are accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old
Cree girl, last Fall. The preliminary hearing was expected to
proceed later this month, but the Crown requested and received
an adjournment in the case.
Prosecutor
Cameron Scott says the evidence is not all ready yet, but that's
all he will say.
"I'm not
prepared to comment on any of the evidence," he told a CBC
reporter, adding, "that's something that will come out in
court."
Tuesday's court
appearance in Melfort was quick. The Crown requested an adjournment
in the case, and that application was granted with no debate.
Jeffry Brown,
Trevor Edmondson and Jeffry Kindrat stand accused of the crime.
The preliminary hearing is now set for late June.
Tisdale
court case captures town's attention
Lori Coolican
Saskatoon StarPhoenix, October 16, 2001
TISDALE
-- A
small meeting room at the local civic centre was not enough to
contain the crowd who arrived Monday morning to catch a glimpse
of three clean-cut white men accused of picking up a 12-year-old
aboriginal girl and sexually assaulting her two weeks ago.
About 25 of
the girl's family members and supporters packed the hallway outside
as Dean Trevor Edmondson, 24, Jeffrey Chad Kindrat, 20, and Jeffrey
Lorne Brown, 25, made their second court appearance and quickly
left the building.
Few, if any,
were inside the courtroom when two of the men appeared before
Judge Edward Gosselin. RCMP officers -- who had been warned a
crowd was coming -- told most of the complainant's family and
friends to wait outside while the judge dealt with speeding tickets
and other matters.
Instead, Edmondson
and Brown took their turn, telling court they have retained veteran
Prince Albert lawyer Cline Harradence to represent them. Harradence
did not attend and could not be reached for comment.
Each of the
men is charged with one count of sexual assault and one count
of being a party to a sexual assault. They have not entered pleas
and will return to court Nov. 5.
The men were
charged after the girl, who is not from Tisdale, told police
she was looking for a ride near Peesane, northeast of Tisdale,
on the afternoon of Sept. 30 when three men picked her up. Her
identity is protected by a publication ban.
The girl told
family she'd been held for several hours, taken to a bar and
later sexually assaulted. She required medical attention when
she was dropped near a farm that night. Another child who saw
the vehicle drive away took down the licence plate number, said
a family member.
A man who attended
court with Edmondson shoved a TV camera operator out of the way
as they left the building, telling her, "There'll be none
of that." RCMP are investigating the incident as an alleged
assault.
The girl's
supporters reacted angrily when they discovered the court appearance
was over.
"I was
deliberately lied to by the RCMP from the start," said one
of the girl's uncles. "They snuck the criminal charges on
with the traffic charges, like it was nothing important."
RCMP Sgt. Ken
Homeniuk attributed the problem to a "misunderstanding"
about how court would proceed.
"Our courtroom
just does not accommodate that many people," he said.
However, observers
suggested the three men are getting preferential treatment because
of their skin colour.
"If Indians
did that to a white girl, they'd be in jail," one man told
an RCMP officer in a heated confrontation outside the building.
Jim Sinclair,
vice-chair of the Treaty Four bands and president of the Saskatchewan
Aboriginal People's Congress, travelled to Tisdale from Regina
at the family's request Monday.
"It's
almost like a community court where everyone seems to know each
other," Sinclair remarked.
People in the
girl's community want to know why the men were released from
custody without a bail hearing, and why they appeared individually
rather than together, he said.
"We want
to make sure this isn't played down. If anything, we want to
raise the temperature on this," Sinclair said, adding there's
no need for a public inquiry, as long as the justice system does
its job.
The three accused
are well-known in Tisdale and have lived there for most of their
lives. Melfort lawyer Stuart Eisner, who represents Kindrat,
called it an "awkward situation." He agreed there is
an obvious racial element to the case, but said anyone who thinks
justice won't be done is pre-judging the process.
Eisner said
he knows the girl's relatives personally and considers them "extremely
fine people."
"I understand
why they're upset," he said. "It's a very tragic event."
At least one
of the accused men is highly regarded at his workplace, where
people are shocked he has been accused of such a crime, Eisner
said.
Men accused
of rape choose judge, jury trial Saskatoon StarPhoenix
Three Tisdale
men charged with sexual assault against a 12-year-old girl elected
trial by judge and jury at a brief court appearance Monday.
Dean Trevor
Edmondson, 24, Jeffrey Chad Kindrat, 20, and Jeffrey Lorne Brown,
25, were released from custody last month without a bail hearing.
They are each
charged with a single count of sexual assault and one count of
being a party to a sexual assault.
The girl, an
aboriginal who does not live in the area, told police three men
offered her a ride on Sept. 30 and kept her for several hours,
taking her to a bar and later to another location where the assaults
took place.
She was hospitalized
for three days afterward.
The three accused
are scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Tisdale Feb. 18, when
a judge will determine if there is enough evidence to proceed
to a trial.
The
Cree girl and the white men: Child's explosive story of sexual
assault sparks native anger in rural Saskatchewan
By KRISTA
FOSS, November 12, 2001, Globe and Mail Page A1
TISDALE,
SASK. --
Shy of five feet tall and barely 90 pounds, she stands in the
doorway of her modest wood home and for a moment looks like any
preteen in a FILA sweatshirt, jeans and hiking shoes clutching
a gel pen and private notebook -- a little girl on the cusp of
adolescence.
But the 12-year-old
Saulteaux Cree girl living in this clean and claustrophobic cottage
with her parents and six brothers won't lift up her eyes. The
hand she reluctantly offers, its nails aglitter with blue polish,
is limp. She shuffles over to a couch and flops onto a spot where
she is hidden from view.
Six weeks ago,
she had an argument with her mom and, fuming, went out for a
walk. Several hours later, she was lifted out of a pickup truck
-- beer-soaked, bruised and bleeding -- and left at a farmhouse
in the dark. Her name is now protected by a publication ban.
Three young
white men -- ages 20 to 25 -- from Tisdale, a farming town separated
by a 30-kilometre yawn of dirt road and rural highway from her
home, were each charged with one count of sexual assault and
one count of being party to a sexual assault.
They were released
from custody and returned to their jobs in welding, construction
and steelworking within a few days. One has now hired Prince
Albert's most famous lawyer, Clyne Harradence, to defend him.
Last week they elected a trial by judge and jury and have not
yet entered pleas.
"They
are extremely well-regarded -- one comes from a highly regarded
farming family and another is well thought of at his workplace,"
said Melfort lawyer Stu Eisner, who is representing the 20-year-old.
The men contend no force was used, he said.
Hopelessness
is stewing along with anger among the off-reserve natives who
surround the girl's blink-and-it's-gone community -- a cluster
of houses and a PetroCan station 20 minutes from Greenwater Lake
Provincial park, several hours northeast of Saskatoon.
The men made
their first court appearance in Tisdale's civic centre while
the girl's father was driving her to Saskatoon to see a specialist.
At the second appearance, native supporters and kin other than
parents were kept in a hall as the three local men appeared before
a judge.
"She's
just a little girl -- they're not taking this case seriously"
said her father, Pete, shifting restlessly in a chair at his
kitchen table and tensing a forearm crudely tattooed with his
surname. The mother hovered in the background, too shy to speak
as she tended to their two toddlers.
A white businesswoman
from Tisdale, whose own son knows the accused, says cynically,
"You know the cliché -- it's just a native girl."
When she does
look up furtively, she is beautiful. Big brown eyes, long silky
hair and a heart-shaped face -- a Cree version of Jennifer Lopez,
only much younger.
As the second-oldest
of seven children, stuck in a small house and a community amid
forests and farms, walking was her comfort and escape. After
the argument with her mom that Sunday, the last day of September,
she had wandered 11 kilometres from her home to Chelan by dinnertime.
She thought
about calling home but she didn't. She sat down near a bar instead
and dug through her purse. Three men came out, and she said Hi.
"I thought
Pocahontas was a movie," she recalled one of the men saying.
She was offered
a ride, she said in an interview. However, Mr. Eisner said instead
she asked for one.
"C'mon,
you can trust us," one of the men had told her. "I
thought they were going to be nice," she said.
In the truck,
she was handed an open beer, hesitated at first but then drank
it. She lied to them about who she was -- she told them her name
was Richelle and she was 14 years old and that she lived in Saskatoon.
New beers were opened for her. "She did obtain beer from
them," confirmed Mr. Eisner.
From the girl's
home, Mistatim is a 15-minute joy ride down a dirt road that
sees little traffic.
It wouldn't
be a destination at all were it not for the Mistatim Hotel, a
dreary rural saloon with peeling paint and a homemade sign that
points to the cafe/lobby.
On a November
afternoon, the bar is empty but for one table of three old-timers,
a weedy poodle named Barney wearing a denim dog jacket, and the
harpsichord sound of a video lottery terminal.
Children are
regularly seen in her establishment, said proprietor Darlene
Hill, despite its pool table, red velour banquettes and Budweiser
pin-up posters. She is licensed for family dining -- and the
girl's family members are familiar customers. So the girl's parents
question why nobody intervened when this recognizable 12-year-old
showed up on a Sunday night -- according to her own account,
stumbling from intoxication -- with three white men in their
20s who had come to buy more beer.
At the mere
mention of the event, Ms. Hill's face loses colour. Her eyes
well up.
"I'm not
supposed to talk about it," she said. But then she sits
down.
"I've
been licensed for children for 11 years. There are truckloads
of kids through here all the time. They [the men] didn't look
their age," she said adding, "This 12-year-old, she's
ruined . . . But I don't think it's a racism thing."
The girl recounts
the visit to the Mistatim Hotel.
She alleges
that one of the men told her, "If I go in the bar naked
he would make sure everyone would give me money," she said.
"I said no. I was already getting scared."
She stumbled
into the bar, and fell again on the way back out, she said. And
then she blacked out and came to with men on top of her, one
after the other, she said. Then she blacked out again. Later
that night, she was dropped off at the farm of a friend of hers,
a boy by the name of Jesse. He took down the licence plate of
the pickup truck before it careened away into the night. His
father drove the girl directly to the hospital in Tisdale.
She woke up
feeling sick, with her "private parts" sore and bleeding
and unable to walk properly. She asked the nurse to keep her
father out of her room -- she was too embarrassed to see him.
"There
is no allegation from the girl that force was used," Mr.
Eisner is quick to point out.
She bled for
two days and developed an infection requiring antibiotics. Last
Sunday, she took the family car and drove it herself to Saskatoon
because, she said, she is so afraid. Her parents had to come
and get her. The local RCMP considered pressing charges.
"They
are going to use that against her," said her father Pete,
who bristles with an angry energy. He does not trust that the
justice system will serve an aboriginal in a rural setting.
He is making
a mental list of things he believes will be dragged up to impugn
her character: the time she broke into the local swimming pool
where she worked to play a practical joke, whether or not she
acts and looks her age, and taking the family car to Saskatoon
without a licence.
At the Tisdale
courthouse, one of the supporters of the accused told Pete's
cousin that his daughter "deserved what she got."
The sign that
welcomes a visitor to Tisdale proclaims it as the "land
of rape and honey," an uncomfortable throwback to the time
canola, grown in abundance in the surrounding countryside, was
known as rapeseed.
With a population
of under 4,000 inside the town boundaries, Tisdale is a not a
place where a person can live anonymously.
The accused
-- Jeffrey Chad Kindrat, 20, Trevor Dean Edmondson, 24, and Jeffrey
Lorne Brown, 25 -- have reputations as "partiers,"
but nothing worse than that according to a local businesswoman.
Mr. Brown's
parents own the Hi Fashion store on the main drag -- conspicuous
in Tisdale for carrying the kind of brand-name sports mules and
baggy pants associated with urban youth.
The accused
"haven't been in a pile of trouble," said Sergeant
Ken Homeniuk, who runs the Tisdale RCMP detachment.
Releasing them
from custody without bail conditions is not unusual in a case
where the accused have no prior records, have parents in town
and are employed at full-time jobs, he said.
"You'd
never see three Indian men accused of doing this to a white girl
released without bail," protested Alvin, a relative of the
girl who shares her surname. "They'd still be in jail."
Racism? "Absolutely
not," Sgt. Homeniuk said.
The second
time the accused men appeared before a judge, the girl's supporters
were kept out of the Tisdale court -- a meeting room in the civic
centre -- simply because it is so tiny and it was already full,
he said. Her parents were inside.
"There
was no intent to keep people out of court," he said.
And yet the
courtroom had extra security in anticipation of trouble.
With a preliminary
hearing set for Feb. 18, the trial is months away -- the girl
will testify at both, unless a deal is struck to keep it out
of court.
Meanwhile,
the girl has gone back to her Grade 7 classes, where she feels
"everybody knows." If she thinks about what happened,
she starts to cry and can't get her work done. She blames herself.
Her sleep is interrupted by crying jags at night. She won't go
for walks any more.
"She is
like a different person," said her father. Then he too averts
his eyes and gulps in air, in a quiet, angry sob. .
- Change of venue urged
in rape case
- Fair trial impossible
in Melfort, group says
Jason Warick
Saskatoon StarPhoenix, June 26, 2002
MELFORT --
Racist attitudes are "more acceptable" in small town
Saskatchewan, so a rape case involving an aboriginal girl and
three white men must be moved to a bigger city, says the president
of the Saskatchewan Coalition Against Racism (SCAR).
"I fear
having a trial here," SCAR president Bob Hughes said outside
Melfort court Tuesday afternoon. "I don't believe she has
a chance if it's here."
Hughes' comments
came following the second day of the sexual assault preliminary
hearing for Jeffrey Lorne Brown, Jeffrey Chad Kindrat and Dean
Trevor Edmondson, all Tisdale men in their 20s.
They are accused
of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl last September. The
girl cannot be identified, and there is a publication ban on
anything that occured in court during the preliminary hearing.
The case was
scheduled for two days, but will take at least one more. The
hearing will resume at the end of August in Melfort, nearly a
year after the alleged incident.
If the case
goes to trial, it must be moved to a larger city with a "less
homogenous" mindset than Melfort, Hughes said.
SCAR sent a
letter to co-prosecutor Cam Scott, asking him to apply for a
change of venue if there is a trial.
"It is
impossible to have a fair hearing in such an atmosphere,"
Hughes wrote.
"Such
situations produce juries composed of predominantly, if not exclusively,
Caucasian jurors."
Hughes said
many people in the community value young aboriginal women less
than young Caucasian women.
"We have
a more serious problem here than in some places. That is a major
concern for us," he said.
The girl's
family agrees that the case should be moved to another part of
the province, said Stan King, who has worked as translator and
mediator for the girl's family with various government agencies,
and who speaks to them daily.
"The family
feels they would not get a fair hearing here," King said.
"People
think these are good boys. (The alleged victim) is just an Indian
girl."
Regional Crown
prosecutor Gary Parker said he's concerned about the delays,
but noted it's not unusual for some cases to take longer than
scheduled.
The Crown has
sent a letter back to SCAR acknowledging receipt of the letter,
Parker said. It's too early to comment on venue issues, he said.
Tension has
been high both in and out of court. Supporters of the girl loudly
whispered several disparaging comments from the gallery during
the proceedings.
Several supporters
of the accused shouted profanities outside court when reporters
attempted to photograph the men.
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
