A retired military lieutenant-colonel is on trial for sexual assault in Winnipeg, after a reservist accused her of groping and threatening him at a work function over three years ago.
Darla Oja, 51, has pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual assault, related to an alleged incident at a military retirement event at the Canadian Armed Forces McGregor Street armoury in Winnipeg in March 2023.
The complainant alleged in Manitoba provincial court on Tuesday that Oja grabbed his buttocks twice at the event, before following him into another room and telling him not to say anything about what happened, “or I’ll ruin your career.”
“It was shocking,” said the man, who testified from behind a privacy screen that blocked him and Oja from seeing each other in the courtroom on the first day of her trial, being presided over by provincial court Judge Lisa LaBossiere.
“[I was] kind of, like, worried. Because of her rank, she would have that ability to make decisions like that, or influence decisions like that,” the man testified.
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The man said he was a lieutenant at the time, which is a junior officer and a lower rank than Oja.
He said Oja — who sat in court Tuesday next to her lawyer, Phillip Millar, and took notes throughout the hearing — was not his supervisor and he’d never met her before that night.
CBC News is not identifying the man because he alleges he is a victim of sexual assault.
The man’s commanding officer, Lt.-Col. Gillian Dulle, later testified she’d been talking to Oja that night about Oja’s upcoming medical release and retirement from the military. Later that evening, she said she saw Oja out of the corner of her eye grab the man’s butt and watched him go “rigid.”
“I was quite taken aback by it. I asked her if she just grabbed his ass, to which her response was, ‘I did. What are they going to do about it? I’m being medically released in June,'” Dulle testified during direct examination by Crown attorney Amanda Heslop.
“Which caught me incredibly off guard. I told her to never touch one of my officers again.”
Dulle said she was angered by the incident, and that she was the one who ended up reporting it within the military.
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She didn’t do that immediately, which she said was in part because the man said he didn’t want it reported, and in part because of her own “gender bias,” which initially shaped her perception of sexual assault by a woman on a man.
Dulle said she ended up raising the incident with supervisors after realizing she had a duty to report it, under a controversial former military policy that was scrapped not long after.
The man said while he’d considered reporting it, he worried about the possible repercussions, but felt he had someone “in my corner” after Dulle came forward.
While both Dulle and the complainant said they thought Oja was intoxicated that night, Oja’s lawyer pressed them both about their own alcohol consumption and memories.
During cross-examination, Millar asked the complainant if it was possible that Oja wasn’t actually the person who grabbed him, since he only felt what happened and didn’t see who did it.
“I don’t believe that,” the man said. “I felt it, and she was standing right next to me.”
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Millar also challenged inconsistencies between the man’s testimony and what he’d previously told police, including an initial estimate that Oja followed him into a room and threatened him about 15 or 20 minutes after grabbing him. In court, the man testified it was 15 to 20 seconds after.
“How could you get that so wrong?” Millar asked him.
“It’s [been] three years, almost, since the event,” the man said.
Millar suggested the man didn’t come forward because he was more intoxicated than he admitted in court, and that he felt pressure to avoid contradicting or embarrassing his boss once she reported the incident. The man denied those suggestions.
Millar also challenged Dulle on points from her testimony that didn’t align with the complainant’s, and suggested her memory of the event was compromised “not just because of time, but because of your level of intoxication.”
“Yes,” Dulle said. “Slightly compromised, I would agree.”
Dulle also agreed she and Oja had “not ever really gotten along,” noting the two women had different approaches to their work and had disagreed over things like budgets.
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However, she pushed back on other suggestions the lawyer made — including that she didn’t report the incident right away because an immediate investigation “would have revealed there was a lot of improprieties going on” at the event, including possible violation of liquor rules.
Dulle also denied a suggestion that her recollection of Oja’s comments after the alleged assault was actually her confusing another conversation that night about Oja struggling to find items from her military “kit” — an accumulation of military-issued equipment — to return after retirement.
“Is it possible that in your state of intoxication, you might have been confused that she was saying, ‘What are they going to do to me, I’m getting out anyhow, if I can’t find my kit?'” Millar asked.
“No,” Dulle said.
Oja’s trial is scheduled to continue Wednesday.
