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Client found not guilty of Sexual Assault, after a three-day trial in the Ontario Court of Justice, Toronto. A.M. was charged with sexual assault during a message of his neighbour. A.M. retained Christopher Assie of Neuberger & Partners LLP, Brampton Criminal Lawyers, to defend him. A.M. was alleged to have given his neighbour a massage. During the massage, the complainant alleged that A.M. had massaged her breasts and had massaged/touched her clitoris and buttocks without consent thus giving rise to a charge of Sexual/Sex Assault. A.M.’s version of events was that after a brief conversation with the complainant regarding her back pain and other ailments outside of their homes, he offered to provide her with Turmeric – which he knew to be help with physical ailments. He offered to give her some if she did not have any. She accepted his offer and went into his home to retrieve it. While discussing various topics in the home, he pointed out a tube of topical anesthetic cream that had been prescribed to him by a doctor to help with his own muscle pain. He offered her some and she accepted. He applied the cream to her back. He denied touching any other body part and flatty denied Sexual Assault. The complainant told the police that A.M. had then tried to ‘bribe her’ by offering her some jewellery after he assaulted her. The incident occurred about a week before Christmas. The complainant had distorted the interaction, characterized innocuous events as nefarious, and had fabricated the sexual assault. Mr. Assie was able to demonstrate through careful cross-examination that the complainant’s account made no sense and did not withstand scrutiny. What she characterized as an attempted ‘bribe’ was in fact the reasonable actions of a small business owner who was simply trying to make a sale during the lucrative Christmas season by presenting her the costume jewelry he sold in the hopes of turning her into a customer. Mr. Assie also spent a significant amount of time preparing A.M. to testify in his own defence. A.M. was an immigrant and was not entirely fluent in English. He was an older gentleman who had never been in trouble with the law before and was very nervous to testify. The only way to help A.M. from feeling overly nervous at trial was to spend several days conducting mock examinations-in-chief and mock cross-examinations of the facts and basis of the Sex Assault charge. All the work preparing A.M. for trial paid off as the judge ultimately ruled that she accepted his version of events and found him not guilty of sexual assault.

*This is an important example of how it is vital to helping a client prepare for giving evidence in court. This type of preparation of the defence evidence resulted in the client being believed by the trial judge on the sex assault charge. At Neuberger & Partner, Criminal Lawyers Toronto, Joseph Neuberger, over three decades of assisting clients has developed a defined process for defences on charges of Sexual Assault, Sexual Interference, Sexual Exploitation, Domestic Assault and Assault. All lawyers in Neuberger & Partners follow the same detailed approach to defending and helping clients succeed in their cases.