N.L. reservist found guilty of sexually assaulting colleague in N.S.

A female army reservist was taking a basic training course in the Annapolis Valley in the summer of 2016 when she invited several colleagues to her house in Dartmouth for a weekend of relaxation and partying.

But the visit ended horribly for the host after one of her guests sexually assaulted her.

She reported the incident to the course instructors upon her return to Camp Aldershot later that day and was advised to go to the Valley Regional Hospital in Kentville for a rape examination.

Tony Wayne Squires, an army reservist from La Manche, was found guilty in Dartmouth provincial court recently on a charge of sexual assault.

Squires, 26, will be sentenced by Judge Frank Hoskins in September.

His trial in Dartmouth got underway last October with testimony from the complainant, who is married with two children. Her identity is protected by a publication ban.

The woman said her husband was away for work at the time of the incident and the children were with her in-laws.

The assault happened shortly after the group of reservists returned to the woman’s home in the early morning hours of July 24, 2016, after an alcohol-fuelled night out on the town.

She testified that she was “doing the rounds,” checking on her guests to make sure everyone was OK, before she went to bed.

She said she spoke to Squires, who was sleeping in one of her kids’ bedrooms, for a few minutes before he pulled her down and tried to kiss her.

When she got up to leave the room, she said Squires stood in her way and closed the door.

She told the court Squires was saying, “It’s going to be OK. It’s fine.”

She said she was telling him, “No, I don’t want to do this. I’m not interested.”

Squires was grabbing at her body and the dress she was wearing, she said, and backed her up onto the bed.

She said he got on top of her and removed her underwear. She said she kept asking him to stop and was “squirming underneath him, trying to not let him do what I think he’s going to do.”

Squires entered her, she said, and it went on for about 30 seconds or a minute before she broke free.

“He kind of tries to change positions, and I got my legs out from underneath him and I left, ran out of the room,” she said.

She said she didn’t look back as she left the room and didn’t say anything to Squires.

She said she told two of the other guests, Stephen Mannion and Ashley Milton, what had happened and then went to bed.

She said Mannion and Milton both said she needed to call police and go to the hospital but she didn’t know what to do.

“I just didn’t know how to handle it,” she said. “I didn’t want to be that person.”

She said she noticed a bruise on her neck after she went back to Aldershot.

On cross-examination, defence lawyer Drew Rogers asked the woman to describe her relationship with Squires, whom she had just met at the start of the course three weeks earlier.

She replied that the relationship before the incident was friendly, with “harmless flirting” back and forth.

Rogers questioned why the complainant, if she didn’t want to have sex with Squires, didn’t raise her voice or call out to the other guests for help.

She said she was scared and in shock.

“I would describe it as more of an out-of-body experience,” she said. “I wasn’t reacting the way I always thought I would in a situation like that.”

The court also heard from Mannion, Milton and the lead investigator, RCMP Const. Shelly Lee Mews.

Squires, a private in the reserves, chose not to testify in his own defence.

The judge, in his decision, said the victim was “a compelling and convincing witness.”

“In every sexual assault trial, and this was no exception, it’s an ordeal for the complainant to be put through the system and the process,” Crown attorney Alex Keaveny told The Chronicle Herald.

“The defence submissions, and to a certain extent the cross-examination, were difficult for her, but she made it through.”

Keaveny said he will seek a significant jail sentence for Squires.

The Crown proceeded summarily so the maximum penalty for the offence is 18 months behind bars.

The Chronicle Herald