Defence lawyer G. Jack Harris called a Vernon tattoo artist to the stand Friday afternoon as his first witness in the case of a former Vernon teacher accused of having a sexual relationship with a student when the student was in Grades 7 and 8.
Deborah Louise Ashton, 45, is charged with sexual assault, sexual interference of a person under 14 and invitation to sexual touching under 14. The relationship is alleged to have taken place from September 2002 to January 2004. She has pleaded not guilty to all three counts.
Troy Semkiw, a tattooer for 14 years, testified that on Aug. 19, 2003, he worked on a woman named Deb for more than an hour, drawing a permanent tattoo on her body in the area below her navel. Harris had Semkiw bring in his appointment book from 2003 to confirm the evidence, which included a home phone number of the woman named Deb.
“I asked you earlier today to look at her (Ashton’s) body and see if your tattoo is still there. Is it?” asked Harris.
“It is,” said Semkiw, who described the tattoo as being green with various colours and included a Mayan glyph figurine with vines branching off the design.
Asked by Harris if the tattoo was “considerably larger than the size of a standard post-it note,” Semkiw said it was.
Semkiw’s testimony is significant as on day three of the trial, Wednesday, Ashton’s accuser testified that even though he claimed to have had lots of sexual intercourse with Ashton, he had never actually seen her fully naked, and was not aware of the existence of that particular tattoo, saying he knew she had one around her ankle.
Harris had suggested to the accuser at the end of his cross-examination that Ashton had a tattoo “six times the size of a post-it note” near her navel.
Crown counsel Neil Flanagan wrapped up his case Friday with the final two of his six witnesses taking the stand; the older brother of the accuser, and a friend of the accuser.
Both men said Ashton was a frequent visitor to the accuser’s home, that she would take them to movies, shopping or out for fast food.
The older brother said he was told by the accuser of the sexual relationship between him and Ashton when the older brother was in Grade 12, nearly four years after the alleged relationship began. The friend testified he saw Ashton and the accuser in bed together at a Shuswap camp during an end-of-year school trip.
Harris hammered away at the credibility of both witnesses, saying the older brother was simply bolstering some of the stories the accuser had come up with, and that the friend had said in his preliminary hearing report that he couldn’t remember where Ashton was when she came into the cabin on the school trip.
The trial will resume Tuesday at 10 a.m. in Vernon Supreme Court due to scheduling conflicts.
Harris said he plans to call a number of witnesses over the course of the week. When asked if Ashton was on the list, he simply replied, “no comment.”
