Warning: This story contains graphic content

EDMONTON—After enduring two days of testimony and intense cross examination, the witness broke down on the stand.

“I was sexually assaulted, traumatized and felt like my body wasn’t mine,” she cried, fists clenched, her body shaking as tears streamed down her face. “You would know that if you were ever sexually assaulted.”

The witness, who testified on Oct. 28, is just one of more than a dozen alleged victims expected to testify in the trial of Matthew McKnight, 32, who is facing 13 charges of sexual assault.

McKnight is accused of using his position as a bar promoter at the since-shuttered Knoxville’s Tavern between 2010 and 2016 to ply young women with alcohol before drugging them and luring them back to his apartment where he sexually assaulted them.

The alleged victims — who cannot be identified as part of a court-ordered publication ban — were between the ages of 17 and 22 at the time they said they were assaulted.

Five women reported the assaults to police shortly after they were said to have occurred, but more came forward after the Edmonton police issued a press release in August 2016 about allegations made against McKnight.

Women who took the stand over the last two weeks have largely painted similar pictures for the jury, piecing together fragments of memories they would rather forget.

“I didn’t want to be a victim,” said the witness testifying on Oct. 28.

Knoxville’s Tavern had been her favourite bar, she said, and she went there almost every second weekend to drink and dance with her friends.

The night of Jan. 17, 2016, wasn’t any different, she said, until she met McKnight at around 1 a.m., when she said he introduced himself as a part-owner who could get her and her friends free drinks, “as much as we wanted.”

After a few shots and some dancing, the witness testified that McKnight offered to take her and her friend on a tour of the bar before asking if they wanted to come to his place for an “after-party.”

They took a shot of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky in the basement before, at last call, the witness said she remembered McKnight offering up one last round of shots at the bar.

That’s when her memory starts to fail.

She said she has flashes of memories of McKnight’s hand on her throat, being forcefully penetrated against her will, but being unable to resist, “I was like a rag doll.”

The next thing she knew, she testified, she woke up in a bedroom with McKnight pulling up his pants as her male friend banged on the door, demanding to be let in.

After she and her friends left, they began to suspect that the witness and her friend may have been drugged, believing their symptoms matched being unwittingly dosed with gamma-hydroxybutyrate, commonly known as GHB.

While she doesn’t have clear memories of the alleged sexual assault, the witness said the pain she felt and the bruises and scratches over her body served as proof, despite her best efforts to forget. She only came forward to police after she saw the media release about other potential victims in August 2016.

“That powerless feeling, that feeling of being vulnerable, being a victim is extremely hard,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

Her sobbing could be heard through the door as she left the courtroom.

Gillian Sayer, a forensic toxicology specialist who works at the RCMP’s national forensic laboratory in Ottawa, said GHB is what is commonly known as a date rape drug, the symptoms of which “looks very similar to what we would associate with a drunk person.”

GHB impairment depresses the central nervous system much like alcohol impairment, Sayer testified, but GHB is far more potent.

GHB is an odourless, colourless liquid. When used in low doses recreationally, GHB can make a user less inhibited, drowsy and more sociable, much like alcohol.

However, at slightly higher doses it can cause nausea, lack of co-ordination and muscle control, dizziness, temporary bouts of a deep, comalike sleep and memory lapses.

Unlike alcohol, where drunken memories can be recalled if prompted, GHB prevents memories from being encoded, Sayer said, meaning memories will be fragmented or entirely eliminated.

Sayer said GHB is a drug of choice for date rape as the effects are short lived and it becomes undetectable in a person’s blood and urine within hours.

Investigators sent blood and urine samples from two alleged victims to the RCMP forensics lab for testing that came back without evidence of GHB, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the drugs were never in that person’s system, Sayer testified.

On Oct. 29, another alleged victim took the stand claiming that both she and her friend “were raped by Matthew McKnight,” the night between Jan. 23 and Jan. 24, 2016.

It was a Saturday night, the witness testified, and both she and her friend got on the “Knox bus” — a school bus used to shuttle patrons from Spruce Grove, Alta., to Knoxville’s Tavern in downtown Edmonton — at around 9:45 p.m. to go “drink and dance and have fun.”

At some point in the night, she testified, McKnight introduced himself as “Matty,” saying he was celebrating his 26th birthday and offered to share shots of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky with them.

The witness said she knew McKnight worked at the bar because she recognized a swipe card that he wore on a key-chain around his arm, something that allowed bar staff to charge drinks to preauthorized tabs.

McKnight then offered her and her friend a tour of the bar, the witness said.

The tour ended in the basement. The witness said McKnight offered them a can of hard iced tea to share. The witness said she only had a few sips while her friend finished the rest.

McKnight said he was having an after-party at his apartment nearby, the witness testified, and he invited the two of them to join in.

The witness said she didn’t want to go, but her friend did, and she didn’t want to let her friend go alone.

All three left the bar and walked two or three minutes to McKnight’s apartment, she said, and when they arrived there was no one else there.

McKnight offered to show them a collection of hats, feather boas and onesies he kept in his bedroom. The witness said her friend — who appeared far more drunk than she was — followed McKnight in while she stood in the doorway.

After they all started trying on his costumes, the witness testified McKnight pushed her backwards onto the bed. The witness said she thought he was being playful at first.

She says she got up and told him not to push her, only to have him push her down again, “this time more forcefully.” She got up once more, she said, and he pushed her again, this time pinning her arms to the bed as he pulled off her pants and underwear.

“I was telling him to stop, get off of me,” she said, telling the jury she tried to fight him off with her knees.

“He forced sex on me,” she testified.

Her friend fell asleep in the bed beside them. The witness said she tried to wake her friend for help, but she didn’t stir.

During her testimony, Sayer described a “GHB coma” as a temporary period of deep sleep, so deep that the only thing that will wake that person is pain.

The witness testified that her friend didn’t move until McKnight began assaulting her, twisting her head to try to avoid McKnight’s lips until she came to and hit him.

The witness testified that while her friend was being assaulted, she crawled out of the bed and began frantically looking for her clothes, when she realized her phone was on the bed. When she went to grab the phone, she testified, McKnight grabbed her and pushed her back in the bed, assaulting her again.

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After he finished, the witness said she pulled on her underwear, grabbed her clothes and boots and fled. She only pulled her pants on once she and her friend were in the elevator, putting on her boots as they got to the ground floor.

At 1:47 a.m., she and her friend got back on the “Knox bus” to go home. Her friend walked to the bus in her socks. The witness says she sat at the front of the bus and cried, her friend went to the back of the bus acting as if nothing had happened.

She decided then she didn’t want anyone to know either.

“Once people know you’ve been raped or sexually assaulted, they look at you differently,” she said, adding that her family doesn’t even know she is testifying.

She chose to come forward to police only after she saw the August 2016 media release, wanting to support other women reporting they had been assaulted by McKnight.

Another witness, testifying on Monday, said she has no memory of how she ended up in McKnight’s apartment on April 16, 2016.

“I believe I was drugged,” she testified.

Taking deep breaths to soothe herself, the witness said the night started after she drove into Edmonton to reunite with two friends she knew from high school. After getting ready and taking selfies in the mirror, the three went to dinner at 02’s Bar and Grill just off Whyte Avenue before walking to The Rack on Whyte to have a few drinks and dance.

When she was in line at the bar waiting to get another drink, she testified McKnight put his arm around her waist, introducing himself as a bar promoter and asking if she and her friends wanted a limo ride to Knoxville’s Tavern, offering them free drinks.

“He would just snap his fingers and there would be free drinks,” she said.

She said she had a number of shots at the bar at The Rack, at which point she said her memory started to fade in and out.

She said she remembers getting in a limo with other women, McKnight was sitting next to her.

She described her next memory as a flash, her standing in a kitchen leaning against a pillar, “I couldn’t hardly stand.” Her next flash of consciousness was her leaning against a wall as she was pulled down a hallway.

In the next flash, she testified, she was naked on a bed on her back saying “no, please no,” with McKnight on top of her.

“I couldn’t move, I couldn’t find my voice,” she testified, recounting a nightmarish series of disjointed memories of repeated, forceful, violent sexual assaults.

“He was very aggressive,” she said, trying not to cry. “It hurt so bad,” she continued, breaking into sobs.

She said she remembers at one point trying to scratch McKnight, “then he got even rougher.” She chose then to focus on getting out alive.

“I knew at that point I had to wait for it to be over,” she testified.

She awoke the next morning “traumatized,” saying she felt around for her belongings strewn on McKnight’s bedroom floor as he lay sleeping in his bed.

He awoke as she was getting dressed. Afraid he might hurt her again, she said she tried to be friendly and polite to avoid angering him.

He insisted on walking her out of his apartment and into a cab, “I just wanted to be alone,” she cried.

As she sat in the car, she said she felt a combination of “confused and scared and disgusted and ashamed.”

The following Monday, a close friend she worked with encouraged her to go to the hospital.

The rape kit felt like another violation, the witness said, describing laying on a brightly lit table as swabs were collected, her scrapes and bruises documented.

“I was hysterical,” she said, “I was shaking and crying.”

After the alleged attack, she said her hip still hurts and sends pain radiating down her leg.

When asked if she recognized her attacker among those in the courtroom, the witness met McKnight’s eyes for the first time, staring as she pointed at him without hesitation.

Cross examination from McKnight’s defence lawyer, Dino Bottos, had focused largely on the glaring holes in each witness’s testimony, pointing out inconsistencies in their scattered recollections.

It will ultimately be up to the jury to decide what they believe.

McKnight’s trial is expected to span 48 days.

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