WARNING: Graphic content

The complainant accusing three Toronto police officer of sexual assault “took part in acts (she) simply now does not remember” due to alcohol, defence lawyer Alan Gold suggested on the third day of cross-examination.

The complainant, a parking enforcement officer, has testified she was unable to move or speak when she was forced to perform oral sex and was vaginally penetrated by the 51 Division officers in a downtown Toronto hotel room in January 2015.

She says she had gone to the hotel room with two officers, Leslie Nyznik and Joshua Cabero, after a night of drinking and bar-hopping on “Rookie Buy Night.” She wanted to rouse a third officer, Sameer Kara, who had left earlier after vomiting on himself, so they could go back to a bar. She said that, on the cab ride to the hotel, she suddenly got a severe headache and when she went to the washroom, the room was spinning.

She said she believes she was both intoxicated by the drinks she’d had that night, and that she could have been drugged because she had not felt that way before.

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Gold, who represents Kara, pointed to a video showing the complainant walking into the hotel with Nyznik and Cabero and to a text message sent by her at 3:43 a.m. — two things, the complainant testified she could not remember.

“We know those were things you consciously did,” he suggested. “Why isn’t the same true of everything in between?”

“I know what I remember happened in the hotel. I did not consent,” she responded.

“Why isn’t it a reasonable possibility that you are not a victim of a crime, but a victim of the alcohol diminishing of your inhibitions and the alcohol impairment of your memory,” Gold said.

“I did not consent to what happened in that hotel room,” she said.

Earlier Gold pointed to the complainant’s testimony that, during events in the hotel, Kara asked her questions: “He asked me to kiss him . . . . He asked if he could ejaculate in me.”

“He is not ordering you, is he? He is not telling you, is he? He is asking, giving you the choice, the decision,” Gold said.

“He is asking. I was just unable to answer,” the complainant responded.

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Gold suggested there could have other questions Kara asked that the complainant did not remember. She agreed.

Cabero’s lawyer Patrick Ducharme suggested the complainant’s memory could not be relied upon. While she remembered walking from Pravda to the Brass Rail with a group of officers, video evidence shows they took a cab, he pointed out.

He also suggested parts of her evidence were fabricated to explain her behaviour and that her evidence that her vision was impaired is false.

The complainant disagreed.

Ducharme also questioned the complainant about her use of the term “black out.”

He said it is a common to confuse blacking out with passing out, and that people who have blacked out can appear functional to those around them.

“If I were to suggest you were functional at all times in that room until you went to sleep, you would disagree,” Ducharme said.

“I wasn’t able to physically move or see,” she said.

All three lawyers suggested the complainant willingly and intentionally participated in the sexual activity that took place in the hotel room.

“I absolutely disagree,” she responded.