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A Kingston woman told a court that she unsuccessfully tried to talk her then 15-year-old friend and co-worker out of an intimate relationship with their weed dealer who was eight years older than her.
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“I told her, ‘You really shouldn’t be doing this,’” said the woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban in Ontario Supreme Court in Kingston.
The woman was testifying about events dating back to 2007 at the trial of the alleged weed dealer Michael Haaima. Now 40, Haaima faces 98 charges for alleged incidents dating back between 2007 and 2022, when he was arrested. The indictment against the tech worker lists more than 30 counts of sexual assault, several of which are alleged to have involved choking or weapons.
Madame Justice Robyn Ryan Bell is presiding over the trial without a jury, which is expected to last at least five months with dozens of Crown witnesses testifying. Haaima appeared in court Monday in a light summer jacket and with a neatly groomed beard. He took notes occasionally but registered no emotion.
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According to testimony on Monday under examination by Assistant Crown Megan Williams, the witness said she had consensual sex with the accused not long after they first met, although she was alarmed when he became aggressive and began biting, slapping, hitting and choking her.
“I had a boyfriend at the time, [but] I was 18 and sexually inexperienced,” she said.
Under direct questioning from the Crown, the witness said she and her younger sister and an older friend had been kicked out of their home in Kingston’s west end by their alcoholic father who was working the midnight shift at an all-night restaurant.
The witness told the court that Haaima had “offered” them a place to stay when they reached out to him. Under questioning from Haaima’s lawyer Natasha Calvinho, she affirmed that she had originally told police she and her sister and friend had asked him if they could move into his home on Selkirk Street.
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“I felt a relief that we didn’t have to live on the street,” she said.
She testified that, on their first night in Haaima’s home, the three women slept in his bed because their rooms weren’t ready and that he had sex with her friend, before assaulting her. She told the court that the accused made advances towards her, but she resisted, telling him she had her period. According to her direct testimony, he told her to “throw your tampon under the bed—I’m putting [my penis] in you.”
She did as he told her, because, she told the court, “it sounded like there was no room for debate. I felt trapped, like I had no choice. I have experience with trauma. I dissociated.”
The witness told the court that she and her sister and friend all worked at a fast-food restaurant, and they met a 15-year-old who came in from Harrowsmith for afternoon shifts. She said Haaima pursued the younger girl, who didn’t listen their warnings about him and told him about his roommates’ issues with him. “We had contempt for him and he knew it,” she said.
According to her testimony Monday, the witness said he moved out shortly thereafter and moved in with the 15-year-old girl and his mother. “[The mother] was okay with it,” the witness said.
The trial continues.
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