Twenty-three years after a masked intruder burst into her southwest home and repeatedly raped her, the victim choked back tears as she recalled the attack in court Monday.
The woman, now 54, told how after hearing the front doorbell she answered, thinking a friend was pulling a late-night prank.
Instead, the visitor punched her several times in the face and forced his way into her home before violently assaulting her and ransacking the place.
James Alexander Parent, 52, has pleaded not guilty to seven charges, including sexual assault with a weapon, sexual assault causing bodily harm and unlawful confinement.
The trial, which opened Monday, is expected to hear about DNA evidence allegedly linking Parent to the attack.
Parent was arrested in September 2008 following a four-year cold case investigation.
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The victim told court Monday she could not identify her attacker, who wore a ski mask and gloves and covered her face during the hour-long ordeal.
“He came in the room with the knife and said, ‘You do what I say or I’ll kill you,’ ” she said of the April 1987 attack inside her 75th Avenue home.
“It was like he was using a weapon, very angry, using a weapon to make sure he had the power and I couldn’t do anything,” she told prosecutor Alison Hayter.
Parent’s lawyer, Adriano Iovinelli, said during an earlier court hearing that he would challenge the reliability of DNA evidence being used against his client.
“The question is continuity of any samples that were seized from (22) years ago and their possible match in relation to my client’s DNA,” Iovinelli said previously.
Under cross-examination Monday, the woman said she was told by police at the time that they were investigating a neighbour as a suspect in the sex assault.
However, she said she never heard any more about the neighbour and was never re-interviewed about him again.
“Police said one man at Mount Royal College was bragging about this assault and (a woman who overheard the bragging) phoned the police,” said the witness.
The victim said she had met the neighbour while wearing a French maid costume to a Halloween party the previous October.
She told Iovinelli the costume went missing from her home after the attack.
Parent was granted bail last fall on the condition he wear a GPS tracking device.
dslade@calgaryherald.com
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