CALGARY — A man facing trial for the second time in a high-profile sexual assault case said Wednesday his accuser never directly told him it was OK for the two of them to have sex in a bathroom at a house party.
Alexander Scott Wagar, 29, was being cross-examined by Crown prosecutor Janice Walsh, who questioned him about whether he asked the alleged victim at any time if she wanted to have sex with him, or if he felt he needed to do so.
“You made those decisions?” Walsh asked.
“I made those decisions. She never said do this or do that. She never said no. She never said ‘Stop, I don’t want to do this’,” answered Wagar.
“But she never said yes?”
“No,” he said.
“She never said yes directly.”
He re-enacted in intricate detail how he and the complainant, who was 19 at the time, first had sex on the bathroom counter of a Calgary home in December 2011 and then moved to the shower.
Wagar perched on the edge of the witness box and then crouched down, leaning back against it, as he gave a running narrative of what he said happened. He also explained how he lathered the woman up in the shower.
Judge Jerry LeGrandeur cautioned Wagar a couple of times saying he didn’t need to go into quite so much detail.
During the original trial, Robin Camp, who was then a provincial court judge, asked the complainant why she couldn’t just keep her knees together and told her “pain and sex sometimes go together.”
Camp acquitted Wagar in 2014, but the verdict was overturned on appeal and a new trial was ordered. It is being heard by judge alone.
A Canadian Judicial Council panel isvmulling over whether to recommend Camp, who is now a Federal Court judge, be removed from the bench.
Wagar has insisted during the retrial that the sex was consensual. He testified the two had been smoking pot in the bathroom before it happened and he decided to “go for it.”
“She didn’t shy away from me in any shape or form,” he said. “She said she liked me.”
Wagar said he would never force a woman against her will.
The case is scheduled to resume Thursday. Defence lawyer Pat Flynn told the court he still has not been able to contact another witness.