Accused says alleged rape at Wasaga house party was consensual sex

WARNING: This article contains graphic details and strong language heard in court that may not be suitable for some readers.

An Orangeville man standing trial for sexual assault relating to an incident at a Wasaga Beach house party on Victoria Day long weekend in 2019 took the stand Monday at the judge-alone proceedings in Superior Court in Barrie.

Dressed in a blue suit and matching tie, Reese Shephard was emphatic when questioned by his lawyer that the brief sexual encounter from which he is charged was consensual.

“I asked her if we were about to f**k,” Shephard said from the stand when Richard Allman asked him to describe the encounter.

“She said, ‘yes,'” added Shephard, while apologizing for using salty language.

Shephard, 24, is charged with a single count of sexual assault and has pleaded not guilty before Madame Justice Vanessa Christie. He was just months past his 18^th birthday at the time of the alleged incident, while the alleged victim was 17.

Shephard testified he was in Wasaga Beach that night only after taking a last-minute phone call from a friend saying that they were about to head north to attend a house party. The host was a young woman who was among their friend group in Orangeville, but had since moved to the southern Georgian Bay beach community.

Shephard testified he hurriedly packed a bag and was driven to Wasaga Beach by a friend, along with another man.

Once there, Shephard described a typical gathering, but one between two disparate groups of people — the Orangeville-based crew and the host’s new friends from the Wasaga area.

“We were out-of-towners,” Shephard said from the stand.

Toward the end of the evening and with most of the guests gone, Shephard said he began to make efforts to return to a spare bedroom where he said that he and his two friends had previously laid claim to the bed.

Entering the room alone, Shephard said he discovered the alleged victim was asleep “in what I presumed was our bed.”

He said he then alerted his friends that their sleeping arrangements had been compromised, and the trio returned to the bedroom to assess the situation.

According to Shephard’s testimony, the complainant was now awake and on her phone. After some playful banter between the three young men and the woman, Shephard said he soon found himself alone in the room, flirting with her.

“We started kissing,” testified Shephard, adding the woman soon began “touching me in my groin area.”

Shephard said a stilted sexual encounter followed that was slow to start because he was unable to get an erection. The sex became more passionate after, according to Shephard’s testimony, the woman performed oral sex on him. Penetration followed.

“She guided me inside her vaginal opening” with her hand, Shephard said, but only after he at first attempted to get up to turn the light on because he was having issues penetrating her.

Earlier in his testimony on Monday, Shephard estimated he had about seven occasions to meet the girl, including one conversation where they had “bonded” while discussing addiction issues suffered by loved ones.

Shephard’s evidence was in direct contrast to the complainant’s earlier testimony that the two had crossed paths just once. Beyond the wide gulf in facts, the contradiction is significant because it raises a legal principle called Browne v Dunn.

Browne v Dunn is case law that dates to Victorian England that established the principle that if a witness offers evidence that directly contradicts that of another witness, that person needs to be given the opportunity to respond in cross-examination.

Though Allman confronted the alleged victim with most aspects of his client’s case when he cross-examined her, the woman was not asked about the wide disparity in how many times they had met, or about the addiction issue.

Crown attorney Dennis Chronopoulos told Christie on Monday that he plans to pursue the issue in court today.

Chronopoulos’s case is that Shephard pretended to be someone else, a man who had left the party earlier, as a ruse to have sex with the alleged victim, who offered evidence to that effect in December.

Chronopoulos began his cross-examination on Monday afternoon. He attempted to poke holes in the accused's evidence that he entered the bedroom with no ill-intent, suggesting that Shephard embellished, made up and/or tailored certain elements of his testimony of what took place after he discovered the woman in bed.

“You’re trying to convey your version of what happened,” Chronopoulos said.

“No, I’m trying to convey the truth,” responded Shephard.

Court broke for the day before Chronopoulos could cross-examine Shephard regarding the encounter itself, which is expected to be covered when court resumes on Tuesday.

Final submissions in the case are scheduled for Jan. 24.