I just know you guys might have fun with this story. I might too if I didn't know some of the parties involved. Thankfully I have nothing at all to do with the prosecution of this one...
QuoteOfficer tells court his version of events
As his pregnant wife and two-year-old son slept at home, RCMP Const. Shawn McLaughlin engaged in three-way sex with a married woman and Const. Graham Belak, according to McLaughlin's testimony in Yukon Supreme Court this morning.
Belak and McLaughlin are standing trial for the rape of a woman in Watson Lake last year and testified for the first time since the trial began Monday.
The Crown has presented all its witness, and today, both officers got an opportunity to tell the court their side of the story.
The alleged victim, who cannot be named due to a publication ban, testified Tuesday and Wednesday that she was drugged and raped at Belak's residence in the early hours of Mar. 8, 2009 following a small party in the border community.
The testimony McLaughlin provided this morning offered a marked contrast to that of his accuser. In earlier testimony, she admitted flirting with McLaughlin during the party, however, McLaughlin described the alleged victim's actions as "aggressive sexual advances."
The 10-year RCMP veteran referred to a statement his accuser made at the party – that Belak and McLaughlin better be careful because she would drag them into a room where she worked and "have her way with us."
"It was fairly overt and to the point," McLaughlin told the court of his impression. "(That) she was interested in having a sexual encounter with Mr. Belak and I."
The flirting, or aggressive sexual advances, continued in the basement where the party was held, where McLaughlin described the alleged victim's use of an exercise ball.
Seated on the inflatable blue rubber ball in a position, "I would characterize as her legs spread ... (she) was gyrating up and down upon the ball in a sexual manner," McLaughlin testified.
When the beer Belak brought to the party had run out, he made an open invitation to party goers that he had beer at his home and they were welcome to come, McLaughlin said. Only the two off-duty officers and the alleged victim left the party and the three walked to Belak's.
Events that happened once the trio arrived at Belak's diverge at this point. The alleged victim testified that Belak and McLaughlin forced themselves on her and she blacked out twice during what she described as Belak raping her, while McLaughlin restrained her. But McLaughlin testified this morning that the entire sex episode was consensual and the alleged victim was a willing participant.
McLaughlin told the court that his accuser complained about her husband and that Belak suggested, "the best way to get back at him is to cheat on him," and the woman agreed.
This conversation combined with talk about the woman's breasts and "butt" prompted McLaughlin to make the following overture.
"'I'm not sure what's going on here but do you want a threesome?'" McLaughlin testified of what he asked the woman. "I didn't know where all this was going, I just wanted to make sure."
According to McLaughlin, the woman went to the bathroom, and Belak commented on McLaughlin's forthright manner.
"'Wow, at least you threw it out there,'" is how McLaughlin described Belak's remarks. "'At least you asked, now we know where we stand.'"
When the woman returned, McLaughlin used the same bathroom facilities and when he came back to the living room, the sexual encounter started.
McLaughlin said he approached the woman who was now standing between Belak's legs, who was seated on the couch.
Kissing and heavy petting progressed to oral sex, then intercourse, testified McLaughlin, with the two officers taking turns penetrating the woman.
"I was kneeling by her head and Graham was having vaginal intercourse with her," said McLaughlin.
At no time did the woman lose consciousness, McLaughlin testified and when asked if he or Belak spiked her drink with a date rape drug, McLaughlin responded, "absolutely not."
During cross-examination, Crown prosecutor Robert Beck attempted to portray McLaughlin's behavior as unbecoming for an RCMP officer, and attacked McLaughlin's credibility.
The married officer responded in the affirmative each time Beck asked if the alleged victim lied to hospital staff, police officials and her husband when she insisted that Belak and McLaughlin raped her.
"Your version of events are difficult to believe," challenged Beck.
"I think it's more common than people would like to admit," said McLaughlin of the incident.
The officer's opinion of his accuser's level of intoxication at the party ran contrary to appraisals offered by four party guests who testified yesterday, noted Beck.
"Would you agree that she was very drunk?" asked Beck.
"I wouldn't say so," McLaughlin replied. "She was able to carry on a conversation and wasn't slurring her words."
Between the testimony of four other guests – three off duty paramedics and a Yukon government employee – the alleged victim's sobriety level was anywhere from tipsy to "sloppy drunk" at the party.
Their testimony combined with that of the alleged victim, puts the alleged victim's drink tally prior to moving to Belak's as between 10 and 14.
She also testified earlier in the trial that she smoked a joint on the way to the party.
Beck suggested the pair of RCMP officers had every intention of having sex with their accuser and the Crown called her a good candidate or "target" because of her inebriation.
"And you'd be in a good position to counter whatever story she gave," said Beck. "Hoping her memory would be poor and she wouldn't be believed."
"I would've hoped that her memories were fond and that she wouldn't tell anybody," McLaughlin replied.
Belak followed McLaughlin on the witness stand and began his testimony before lunch and will undergo cross-examination by Beck this afternoon.
http://whitehorsestar.com/archive/story/officer-tells-court-his-version-of-events/
This man is hardly credible. I hope the prosecution nails him to the wall.
I love the topic title/headline what should be. Says it all really.
10-14 drinks + pot. I don't think she needed to have a drinks spiked to get into a threesome.
Not that I'm saying the mounties are innocent, I really don't know. But a girl that drunk + pot makes a woman... more inclined towards sex.
Of course, for 2 police officers to engage in sexual activities under such circumstances is asking for trouble. At least, they can be charged with being stupid.
Btw, those date rape drugs, for how long do they persist in the body? It seems pretty easy to me for the victim to have a blood test when she wakes up and discover she's been raped.
Took the victim about a day before reporting the incident to anyone. Watson Lake is not exactly CSI: Las Vegas - no special "tox screens" were done other than routine blood work.
I only learned that by sitting in on the closing arguments this morning.
LOL Devil's threesome. :nelson:
Quote from: viper37 on March 12, 2010, 04:59:47 PM
But a girl that drunk + pot makes a woman... more inclined towards sex.
Err yes that's what makes it rape, you know. :huh:
Quote from: Martinus on March 12, 2010, 05:29:52 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 12, 2010, 04:59:47 PM
But a girl that drunk + pot makes a woman... more inclined towards sex.
Err yes that's what make it rape, you know. :huh:
Err, it's the word "no" that makes it rape.
Uhm, no. If someone is too stoned/drunk/unconscious to be able to say no, it's still rape.
Quote from: Martinus on March 12, 2010, 05:32:27 PM
Uhm, no. If someone is too stoned/drunk/unconscious to be able to say no, it's still rape.
That's just it; that person also has to be too stoned/drunk/unconscious to say "yes" for that argument to stand.
If she was capable of giving her consent, she was capable of withdrawing it.
Quote from: Martinus on March 12, 2010, 05:32:27 PM
Uhm, no. If someone is too stoned/drunk/unconscious to be able to say no, it's still rape.
But that's it - you have to be drunk to the point of not being able to say yes or no.
Marty-fag shows his obvoius ignorance of the law. How is this tool a lawyer again? :rolleyes:
Does the Whitehorse Star always read like Hustler?
Quote from: Alcibiades on March 12, 2010, 11:48:01 PM
Marty-fag shows his obvoius ignorance of the law. How is this tool a lawyer again? :rolleyes:
I have come to believe that Lawyer means something completely different in Europe then it does in the US.
Is Mr Belak a Vulcan?
Quote from: Syt on March 13, 2010, 12:11:17 AM
Is Mr Belak a Vulcan?
His brother is pro-hockey player Wade Belak. :Canuck:
QuoteEncounter 'not a proud moment': officer
The intercourse he had with a woman after a party in Watson Lake last March was consensual, RCMP Const. Graham Belak told a Whitehorse courtroom Thursday.
Belak, a 30-year-old former AHL hockey player, is one of two RCMP officers standing trial this week for sexually assaulting a woman at Belak's home early on Mar. 8, 2009.
He took the stand in his defence, following former senior colleague Const. Shawn McLaughlin, 33, who was also charged in the incident that occurred when both officers were off-duty.
Since being charged last March following the allegations, both have been suspended with pay from active duty.
The woman said she was drugged and raped at Belak's home.
The officers maintain the sex was consensual, they did not drug the woman, and that their alleged victim had made a series of sexual overtures to them beginning at the party where they met before going to Belak's.
The officers did not know the woman, nor she the officers prior to the party, Justice Leigh Gower of the Yukon Supreme Court heard.
Once the three reached Belak's residence, casual conversation turned to the subject of marital fidelity and the woman's husband, according to both officers.
McLaughlin, who is also married, and Belak, who is a bachelor, testifed that the woman said her husband treated her poorly.
It was at that point Belak suggested that a way of getting back at her husband was to cheat on him, the court heard.
Crown prosecutor Robert Beck seized on that remark during his cross-examination of Belak.
"I would suggest the reason you brought up cheating was that you were trying to steer her into having sex with you and Shawn McLaughlin," said Beck. "In the hopes she would pick you as the possible candidate to cheat with."
Belak said that was a possiblity, but like McLaughlin before him, he denied the woman ever lost consciousness or that either of the officers forced themselves on her.
When asked directly, Belak and McLaughlin said the alleged victim is lying.
Beck asked Belak if he would think the story of a married woman agreeing to have three-way sex with two men she had just met at a party would be bizarre. Belak disagreed.
"I would say it was rare to hear a story like that, not bizarre," Belak replied. "I think it happens more than people talk about."
The constable appeared to regret his actions, but at the time said he didn't think there was an issue of an off-duty officer sleeping with a married woman.
"It's not a proud moment in my life, that's for sure," said Belak.
"Morally, I would say I probably shouldn't have (taken part) ... because the two parties were married."
When Beck asked him if he considered his actions "immoral," Belak responded that he did not.
http://whitehorsestar.com/archive/story/encounter-not-a-proud-moment-officer/
QuoteJudge to deliver his verdict on Tuesday
Constables Graham Belak, 30, and Shawn McLaughlin, 33, were charged in March of last year following complaints by a woman that she was raped at Belak's house following a party in the border community.
"The accused were determined to have sex with (the woman)," Beck told the court this morning.
"And what better way to do that than pray on a victim that had little chance of being believed."
Having arrived with her husband in Watson Lake just a week before the party and alleged rape, the woman had few friends or acquaintances.
She attended the party to get to know her new co-workers, she testified, and met the off-duty police officers there.
Belak and McLaughlin were friends, but neither knew the woman prior to the party, nor she the two officers.
While each had consumed alcohol on the evening in question, the two officers have testified they were not heavily intoxicated and neither was the woman.
However, testimony from other party guests heard during the trial describe the woman's sobriety somewhere between mild intoxication, all the way to "sloppy drunk."
The defence maintains their clients engaged in consensual sex with the woman and flatly rejected that the officers drugged her, as she testified to earlier in the trial.
"Surely you cannot accept that these two officers, or either one, drugged her and proceeded to have sex with her while she was completely unconscious for two hours," said Robert Warren, McLaughlin's lawyer, said in his closing submissions this morning.
"It just doesn't make any sense."
The toxicology report before the court shows no trace of a date rape drug.
Warren also questioned the alleged victim's credibility on the witness stand, suggesting her spotty recollection of the evening's events raised "red flags."
"'I don't remember' and 'I blacked out' are convenient ways not to have to face the truth," said Warren.
Andrew McKay, Belak's lawyer, portrayed to the woman's behaviour during the evening – at the party and when she moved to Belak's with him and McLaughlin – as an invitation to sex.
"She made passes at the officers at the party and was sexually aggressive towards them," said McKay. "These were words and actions of a consenting individual."
McKay pointed to the woman's conflicting stories to the doctor conducting the rape examination and that she failed to inform her husband or authorities of the alleged assault until 24 hours after the fact.
It is the defence's position that the officers' accuser did not want to her husband to know she had consented to sex with two other men and therefore concocted the rape story.
"She's in a bind ... she thinks she might be outed," McKay told the court. "So she comes up with this story that these officers drugged and raped her."
But the Crown prosecutor argued it is understandable that a woman in the alleged victim's condition would behave in the manner she did, considering the circumstances.
"She didn't tell her husband that she had consensual sex because she didn't have consensual sex," Beck argued. "If we assume she was sexually assaulted by two police officers ... she's not thinking straight, does not have her critical thinking skills.
"One person might go straight to their spouse and tell them they were assaulted, another might do what (the alleged victim) did," Beck continued. "She was emotionally shut down."
Following the Crown's and defence's submissions, which continued through to press time early this afternoon, Yukon Supreme Court Justice Leigh Gower must weigh the evidence and make a decision, expected Tuesday.
http://whitehorsestar.com/archive/story/judge-to-deliver-his-verdict-on-tuesday/
Quote from: Martinus on March 12, 2010, 05:32:27 PM
Uhm, no. If someone is too stoned/drunk/unconscious to be able to say no, it's still rape.
she said she was near unconscious or unconscious.
The officers says she wasn't.
I'm assuming, for the sake of the argument, that she was conscious. But being drunk and stone, a woman is usually more willing to have sex, or try something different (threesome being an example). It's not rape, it's having less inhibitions, totally different.
Of course, if her version of events are true (spiked drinks) that would be rape. I'm not a moron, in case you forgot.
Quote from: Barrister on March 13, 2010, 12:59:27 AM
Quote from: Syt on March 13, 2010, 12:11:17 AM
Is Mr Belak a Vulcan?
His brother is pro-hockey player Wade Belak. :Canuck:
Do they also have a Franco-Canadian archeologist in the family?
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