Top court convicts man barred from cross-examining victim by rape shield law

TORONTO — Canada’s top court has restored the conviction of a man who argued the rape shield law had prevented him from defending himself properly.

While the court found errors in previous rulings leading to his conviction, it said no miscarriage of justice had occurred.

The man known as R.V. was convicted of sexually interfering with a 15-year-old girl.

“At R.V.’s trial, the Crown (the prosecution) said the girl was a virgin before that weekend,” the Supreme Court’s Wednesday case summary reads. “It said she became pregnant around the time she said she was assaulted. It used this evidence to support the charge that R.V. sexually assaulted her. But R.V. denied this. He said someone else must have made her pregnant. He wanted to ask the girl whether she had sex with anyone else.”

Lower courts refused to allow R.V. to cross-examine her on other sexual activity that might have accounted for her pregnancy.

Ontario’s Appeal Court ordered a new trial and threw out the conviction on appeal.

Canada’s top court ruled on Wednesday that a defendant “should have been allowed to ask limited questions about a complainant’s sexual history, but in this case it wouldn’t have changed the verdict, the Supreme Court has ruled.”

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