Thursday, January 29, 2004                                                                   Halifax, Nova Scotia

By Our Staff

Sydney

It didn't take long for a jury to find a Sydney Mines man not guilty of performing oral sex on his then-girlfriend without her consent.

At noon Tuesday, the 12 jurors hearing the sex assault case received instructions on their duties from Supreme Court Justice Frank Edwards.  They were then served sandwiches, cookies and drinks, only to return 10 minutes after 1 p.m. with a verdict.

The jury was told Monday during the one-day trial, which involved four witnesses, that the 31-year old accused had been dating a 21-yr old Glace Bay woman for about a month in August 2002 when he began performing oral sex on her as she slept on her stomach one night.

The pair had had consensual sexual intercourse days earlier after watching a pornographic movie with another couple who retired to another room in the complainant's apartment.

The complainant said her normal bedtime routine was to invite her boyfriend, who was also living in Glace Bay at the time, back to her bed where they would have a smoke and talk about the day's events before she fell to sleep.

On Aug. 16, the night of the alleged assault, the boyfriend was caressing her before she fell asleep, and she did not object.  But she awoke some time later to find her boyfriend performing oral sex on her.  She yelled for her brother, who entered her bedroom and told the man to leave.

The woman, recently separated from her husband, reported the incident to police about five days later, after a bitter fight with her boyfriend on a street.  She and her current boyfriend held hands in court.

The accused told the court that he performed oral sex on the woman regularly, and on the night in question, she was awake throughout the sex act, "moving around,' "moaning" and "laying on her back at the time."

As the verdict was read to the court, the complainant ran out of the courtroom and down the hallway, crying.

The accused also cried, hugging his mother and lawyer, and was overheard saying to his lawyer, " I've never been trhough this before...Thank you."

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