August 23, 1989: At East York (later part of Toronto), a secretary is kidnapped at gunpoint, driven to an underground garage, raped and beaten. She is released two hours later. And four weeks later, it is reported she has been charged with public mischief for this imaginary crime.
(This case was reported by the NewsBank edition of the Toronto Sun, September 22, 1989, page 66).
Unfortunately, I have to date been unable to find anything about it on the regular Internet, which is a shame because it is really one of a kind. The following information has been culled from various reports by the same newspaper and the Toronto Star accessed through NewsBank.
A man was charged with the attack on September 14, but the case against him was dropped. Then, the complainant was named as Kari Ann Size.
When she stood trial in November 1990, she claimed to still be traumatised by the attack; she had attempted suicide in January. Can you hear the violins playing in the background yet?
She went to counselling – through a rape crisis centre, no doubt – and was told her mind had blocked out the incident.
Returning to the night she wasn’t raped, she said she went to a bar alone because her boyfriend was out of town and she felt lonely. There was only one other customer there at the time, Allan Cartledge, and she went back to his apartment with him where she was raped.
Cartledge said they had sex but it was consensual.
When asked why she hadn’t cried out, Size came up with the usual pathetic excuses. Then she shared a taxi with Cartledge; he got out and went off to do some more drinking. She got out at a park and hid under a tree before banging on a door and asking the woman who answered to dial 911.
Pride of place in this farce goes to expert witness Dr Elaine Borins of Toronto Hospital who told Judge Gordon Hachborn that Size had indeed been raped. At the age of 12. In other words, Size told the good doctor she had been raped, and Borins believed her.
(In Canada, rape is called sexual assault, and there are no jury trials).
Borins continued that judging by her psychological symptoms, Size had been raped again since although not at the time and place or in the way she told police.
Victims of sexual assault often dissociate, she said, and are sometimes unable to recall the circumstances in which they were attacked...yadda, yadda, yadda,
Now here is a real gem, asked by Crown prosecutor Anna Maleczyk how Size had come up with so many details which subsequently turned out to be untrue, rather than admit Size had been lying (and that she had been duped), Borins said although her story was untrue in a legal sense and caused trouble for the falsely accused man and for police, she had no malicious intent.
There is a psychological truth to Size’s stories that can be known only after more therapy (which Borins will happily deliver then send the state a hefty bill).
The prosecutor was right on the money when she pointed out that Size would have been upset if her boyfriend found out she’d had sex with someone else, so she described an assault with screwdrivers and a hammer to get sympathy.
Screwdrivers and a hammer!
After an eight day trial, Judge Hachborn acquitted Size, not because he was impressed with the psychobabble of Dr Borins but because Size was a HEAD CASE, although being a judge he didn’t put it so bluntly.
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