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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2010
The Buzz
GUESS WHO’S A DIVA?
Roses
Awww...
❚PHOTO/Garrett James
Here’s what we say about Burton’s Surrey performance: Hey, lighten up, would ya?
Are you the recipient of a ‘rose’ this week? Page 15
What’s On, 20
Burton Cummings performs Friday at the Mayor’s Gala in Surrey. Good thing his music is tight, because his personality sucks.
❚IN COURT
‘I WAS EMBARRASSED... SCARED’ Emotional witness details Surrey border guard’s strip search; defence highlights inconsistencies Tom ZYTARUK Staff Reporter
NEW WESTMINSTER – A young American woman who claims she was strip searched and sexually assaulted by Surrey border guard Daniel Greenhalgh in a men’s public washroom at the Peace Arch border crossing broke down repeatedly under cross-examination Thursday. Greenhalgh is accused of sexually assaulting three female travelers at that border crossing in 2007. The witness, whose identity is shielded by a publication ban, sobbed and dabbed her tears with a Kleenex as defence lawyer Joe McCarthy had her recount the alleged ordeal, in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster.
She said Greenhalgh had her strip in a cubicle, and she told him “I don’t feel comfortable,” just before taking off her shirt. She’d already removed her jeans, she said. “I didn’t want him to see me.” “He said to me he still didn’t know if I was hiding anything at all. So he made me turn and face the wall.” Earlier this week the court heard that government policy requires that strip searches be conducted by two guards of the same gender as the person being stripped, and only with the approval of a superior officer. Guards are not allowed to touch those being searched. “First he patted down below,” she said, and after that he “felt around” under her bra. Justice Frits Verhoeven briefly adjourned court twice to allow the crying witness to
regain her composure. Earlier in the day, McCarthy pored over the minutiae of that night, pointing out some inconsistencies in her recollection of events leading up to the alleged crime. “My memory knows what happened to me,” she protested, adding she recalls what “traumatized” her. See RELATED STORY, page 8 “I’m not going to remember how many sprinklers were on the lawn,” she said. The defence noted she’d had previous difficulty with immigration issues at the border, and that she told Greenhalgh in the secondary inspection bay that there’d been marijuana and cocaine in her car in the past, but not this time. The court heard she told the border guard this before he
searched her car for drugs. “He told me I would have two choices,” she testified: Either she’d be detained overnight, that it would go on her record and she’d be strip searched in the morning, “or I could consent to be strip searched by him.” “It was a threatening tone,” she said, “and he was telling me if I didn’t consent to certain things there would be consequences,” she told the court. “I was embarrassed and nervous and scared.” She said he told her to walk across the parking lot and then cross the street to a building. “The restroom,” she said. She said she was released after her alleged ordeal and was driving to Vancouver with her boyfriend when she told him what had happened, and he became extremely upset. The trial continues.
❚POLITICS/Eight vie for seat on city council; voters make their pick this weekend
Delta, here are your choices as you head to polls Saturday Your guess is as good as ours as to who will win but no matter who gets the nod, it will be his or her first time serving on a council. Page 3 BISHOP
DeVRIES
GHUMAN SARA
HARMS
HIGGINS
PANDHER
PATON
ROBINSON