Double-booked courtroom, Crown delays lead to Ontario sex assault case being thrown out
CBC
Warning: This story mentions sexual assault.
Taylor had been feeling really strong.
It was the morning of the trial and more than a year since police charged a man with sexually assaulting her in an alleged incident she describes as "severe."
Taylor was feeling confident about the trial and felt that by testifying this spring, she was "standing up for a lot of other victims" of sexual violence.
But on the day of, she broke down and remembers the Crown prosecutor comforting her and giving her pep talks.
"It was a pretty rough day," she told CBC Toronto.
Taylor isn't her real name. CBC is using a pseudonym because she was the complainant in a sexual offence proceeding.
She lives in Toronto, but the case was being heard in Fort Frances, a town in northwestern Ontario right on the border with Minnesota where the alleged incident happened.
"I made eye contact with [the accused] in the courtroom. It's like your body is going into flight-or-fight mode when you're there and you have to live through that whole experience," she said.
WATCH: 'Taylor' talks about the experience of seeing the accused in court:
But Taylor didn't end up testifying, because the trial didn't go ahead.
The courtroom was double-booked with another sexual assault trial, according to court records. The Crown prioritized the other case, which involved a youth and had been winding through the courts for longer.
Taylor's case was rescheduled for seven months later. But before it could be heard this fall, it was thrown out because it took too long to get to trial, an issue that's gotten worse since the pandemic and hit a record high last year, according to provincial statistics.
"It feels like when somebody passes away and you're in disbelief — it doesn't really feel like an end, because there's been no defining moment," Taylor said. "I'll never get that. And [the accused will] probably never get in trouble for what he did."