The sexual assault retrial of a former Vernon hockey coach continued in court Wednesday, May 29.
Coldstream resident Keith Chase has pleaded not guilty to the sexual assault of a 16-year-old player on a hockey team he coached, alleged to have taken place in 2004.
Chase was charged in 2020, found guilty in 2022 and was sentenced to two years in jail in 2023. However, he was successful in appealing the conviction and a retrial is currently underway.
On Wednesday in Vernon’s BC Supreme Court, Chase’s lawyer, Richard Fowler, briefly questioned the complainant — whose identity is protected by a publication ban — before Crown prosecutor Matthew Blow called the the complainant’s father to the stand.
The father told the court that he came to know Chase when his daughter was playing ringette with Chase’s daughter around the ages of nine to 11. The two girls later played hockey together.
The alleged sexual assault took place the night before a playoff hockey game in Kamloops in 2004. The court heard from the complainant’s father that the victim had stayed over at Chase’s house that night, and it wasn’t the first time she had had a sleepover at the Chase residence.
The father said his daughter had been driven to the game by Chase, and after the game, he was about to drive her home from Kamloops when she started sobbing.
“It was a bit strange,” he said, saying she had told him she was upset because the team had lost and their season was coming to an end, but he had never seen her cry after a game like that before.
He described his daughter’s personality around the time of the offence, saying she was a “happy, bubbly girl,” and one of the better players on her team.
The court heard that the complainant went on to secure full ride scholarships to U.S. universities. In late 2007 and early 2008, she went to school in New York, but about a month later she became homesick and returned to her parents in Vernon.
Her father said it was on April 12, 2008, when his daughter told him and her mother that she had been sexually assaulted by Chase. The victim’s father had met his wife and daughter at their business and went into the office, and noticed his daughter was sobbing. He noted it was very similar to the sobbing he observed on the drive back from Kamloops in 2004.
On that day in 2008, after hearing his daughter’s story, the complainant’s father went to get his car registered. He soon realized Chase’s business, Chasers Bottle Depot, was near where he was getting his car registered.
The father told the court that he encountered Chase while getting his car registered. He described seeing the alleged perpetrator of his daughter’s sexual assault by chance as being “surreal.”
When Chase came up to him, the father said he told Chase that he’d just learned what happened on the night of the alleged sexual assault.
He said Chase asked him what his daughter had told him.
“I said, she told me everything,” the father said. He added that Chase responded by saying “it’s probably not as bad as what she said it is,” to which he responded: “I’m going to believe my daughter.”
The victim’s father told the court that Chase referred to having a few drinks that night, adding Chase fell silent, his posture changed and he shrugged his shoulders after he found out what the father had been told about the alleged incident.
The father said his hands were shaking after the chance encounter with Chase, who walked back to his business after the brief conversation.
He drove back to his business, where he found his daughter had calmed down since he had seen her before taking his car to be registered.
The Crown asked the father if there were any discussions about going to the police after his daughter told them her story. He said he and his wife were more concerned about “making sure she was OK.”
The court previously heard that the complainant reported the alleged incident to the police many years later, in February 2020.
“She made the decision that she couldn’t take this anymore,” her father said.
Justice Sheri Ann Donegan concluded Wednesday’s hearing and set a court appearance in Kamloops on June 10, for the purposes of fixing a date for the continuation of the trial.
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