A woman alleges that a once-prominent Toronto prosecutor entered her shower when she was naked and grabbed her thigh, telling her to “shush” when she screamed for help.
“He grabbed me on my inner thigh, my private area,” the 32-year-old woman, who cannot be named, told a provincial court judge. Calvin Barry, 48, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to one count of sexual assault. Barry, who left the Crown’s office for the defence bar in 2004, and his former girlfriend took the stand to deny the woman’s allegations.
At the time of the alleged assault on Saturday, May 24, 2008, the complainant was sharing a condominium with Barry’s then-girlfriend. The complainant said she got up at 6 a.m. because she had to coordinate a conference in northwest Toronto. She went to the living room and briefly saw Barry dressed in boxers, she told prosecutor Orest Yereniuk.
She then took a shower in her private ensuite bathroom, she said. “I look over and Mr. Barry was in my shower,” she testified. He grabbed her inner thigh and her arm, as she tried to cover her breasts and genitals, she said. “I started screaming for my roommate.” Barry said “shush” two or three times, she testified.
But her roommate quickly pulled the mumbling man away while berating him, she said. Barry denied the allegations. “It absolutely did not happen,” he told his lawyer, Frank Addario. He said he had about five glasses of wine the night before so took a taxi instead of driving to his girlfriend’s to spend the night.
The next day, he thought the complainant was driving to work downtown, so he asked his girlfriend if he could ask her for a ride, he told provincial court Justice Hugh Fraser.
“She said, ‘Yeah, go ahead.’ ”
He said he tapped on the woman’s bedroom door and it opened a little. He called her name, but got no response until he suddenly saw her. “She was completely naked,” he said. “She screamed.” “I said, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ and I turned my head.” Barry’s now-former girlfriend backed up his version of the incident, which she said she witnessed from a few metres away.
She said she later apologized to her roommate. “She said, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay. He just scared me.’ ”
Final arguments are to be heard Thursday.
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