Ghomeshi back in court for second week of trial

The sexual assault trial of former CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi continues today.

Television actress Lucy DeCoutere, the second woman to testify, acknowledged Friday that she told Ghomeshi that she wanted to have sex with him a day after he allegedly choked and slapped her. She did so after Ghomeshi’s lawyer produced pleading emails that showed she wanted a relationship with him.

The trial resumes Wednesday morning, with the Crown expecting to file an agreed statement of facts to the court.

The next day, she said she chose to go to investigators to update her statement so that prosecutors would not be “blindsided” by details they had never heard before.

“It goes to rebut the allegation that she more recently fabricated the story or that she colluded with other witnesses in coming up with the allegations against Mr. Ghomeshi”, Callaghan said of the testimony the witness could offer. “Did you think masturbating him would fall within that category?”

“Intercourse is what I meant”.

One of them, sent a few hours after DeCoutere alleges Ghomeshi assaulted her, expressed a desire to have sex with him.

She told the court that she was speaking to a group of people following a performance at the festival when Ghomeshi came over to her and rested his arms on her back.

She came forward to police, she said, because she realized what happened to her was not an isolated incident and “recognized a pattern…there was familiarity in some of the things I was hearing”.

Up until last Friday, this was all she ever said about that night – and that since the alleged choking, she had always kept her distance from Ghomeshi.

Ghomeshi and the woman went out for dinner after that interaction, and on another night, met in an isolated part of a city park where they began kissing on a bench.

Earlier on Monday, the woman testified that Ghomeshi had surprised her when he put his hands around her neck while they were “making out”.

“His hands were around my neck and he was squeezing”, she told the court. “I tried to get out of it and then his hand was on my mouth, sort of smothering me”.

“He would have called me”.

She is the only one of the three complainants who can be publicly named during the trail. Her last words to him before she got out of the vehicle were: “You are f-ing insane. It didn’t feel safe or sexy”, she told the Crown, adding that she did not consent to the action, and left soon after.

But during cross-examination, Henein grilled the witness about that claim.

Henein said the complainant also invited the accused to her brother’s stag and doe. Mind you, neither is Lucy DeCoutere.

Henein said the two exchanged 5,000 messages between October 29, 2014 and September 23, 2015.

The lawyer also said that DeCoutere and the witness had a Facebook conversation 11 days before the witness spoke to police in which the witness agrees to corroborate DeCoutere’s evidence.

“I guess I did”, witness conceded.

In one comment the witness made to DeCoutere, she wrote, “It’s time to sink the pr**k”.

Crown attorney Michael Callaghan said the trial may need to be delayed so that the witness can fly to Toronto from Nova Scotia, where a winter storm grounded planes Monday afternoon.

Ghomeshi, 48, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of sexual assault, and one count of overcome resistance by choking.