A young girl, photographed during an alleged sexual assault at a Pitt Meadows rave, was described as disoriented and disheveled by her friends during a trial on Tuesday.
One who testified, a boy who was 15 at the time, told the court the girl got separated from her group of friends during the Sept. 10, 2010 party – billed as “Another Night in Bangkok” – at a farm on Harris Road.
The girl’s friends spent almost two hours looking for her, he said, and that they eventually found her running out of a field, accompanied by Colton McMorris, who claimed he had consensual sex with the 16-year-old.
“Her hair was messed up. She had dirt on her,” said the boy at the trial for Dennis John Allen Warrington, a young man accused of posting graphic photographs on Facebook of McMorris and the girl engaged in sexual activity, which did not include intercourse.
“She couldn’t walk straight. She has a hard time getting words out. She couldn’t finish sentences,” he added.
The boy, who said he is no longer friends with the victim, told the court the group walked to McDonald’s after the party to eat, then catch a cab.
His description of the young girl’s demeanour at the time, however, differed from McMorris, who testified last week that the girl was not intoxicated.
The boy said the young girl was crying uncontrollably when they left the party and continued to sob even after they went to a friend’s house.
He added the girl was crying because she had lost her iPhone.
Another friend of the girl testified that she didn’t see the photographs of the party until she went to school on Monday. She told the court a classmate showed her a photograph on his cell phone.
“He was showing them to everybody,” she said.
The graphic photographs began spreading a day after the rave, prompting police to issue a public plea for teens to stop sharing them.
Although a large group of people surrounded McMorris and the girl while they were having sex, only one boy was charged for photographing them.
The teenage boy was also charged with distributing child porn, but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of distributing obscene material and was sentence Feb. 10 to 12 months probation.
Warrington got the images from a friend, then shared them on Facebook, asking people to identify the couple in them.
McMorris was charged with sexual assault after the rave, but the charge was stayed in February after Crown found the available evidence was unlikely to land a conviction.
The girl continues to maintain that she did not consent to the oral sex or digital penetration that occurred.
When court proceedings against McMorris came to a halt earlier this year, the girl – now a young woman – made a public plea for more witnesses to break the “code of silence” and come forward.
She has yet to testify at the trial, but is expected to take the stand sometime this week.
Warrington’s lawyer plans to launch a Charter challenge because 16 is the age of consent and the teens were photographed in public.
Defence lawyer Paul Evans asked the teens, who testified on Tuesday, the age of the people at the party. He was told the ages ranged from 13 and 14 years to the mid-20s.