B.C. judge stays charges in child sex assault case that exceeded court limits

A B.C. judge says trial delays for a man accused of sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl went beyond a ceiling set by the Supreme Court of Canada as he stayed the case more than two years after charges were laid.

Provincial court Judge Mayland McKimm says in a decision released in May that the man was accused of sexually assaulting the child at his family home when she and her mother attended a pre-Christmas festive meal in December 2021.

The ruling says the child told her mother of the man's “inappropriate behaviour” the next day, and the woman confronted him in his home with his wife present, secretly recording the interaction on her phone in an exchange that occurred “fluently” between Mandarin and Cantonese.

McKimm's decision says the mother provided the recording and a “purported transcript” to police, and the man — identified only by his initials in the ruling — was charged in May 2022, but the Crown's “failure” to assign a prosecutor to the case led to a threemonth delay before the man's trial could be set.

The ruling outlines a number of other delays that plagued the case, including a Cantonese interpreter's failure to show up to court, the man's lawyer falling ill, a witness being diagnosed with cancer, and a failure to ask the semi-retired trial judge to hear the case during “non-sitting months.”

The ruling says the delays in the case went beyond the 18-month limit set by the Supreme Court of Canada for timely trials, warning that a “court scheduling model” that can't handle trials that take “longer than anticipated ... will sadly lead to cases such as these simply taking too long to complete.”