Uncle, aunt should pay big for sex abuse

Lawyer says $500,000 is owed to woman for years of horror

Joey Thompson, The Province

The lawyer acting for a woman sexually attacked countless times as a child called on the court to make an example of the deviant Sikh uncle and his wife by hitting them in the pocketbook -- to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

Fred Easton told B.C. Supreme Court yesterday that Joginder Singh Bains concealed his forced perverted assaults on his little niece while basking in his public status as an exalted Sikh religious leader in the Fraser Valley.

His wife Darshan, the aunt of the plaintiff, Karamjeet Kour Singh, was blameworthy, too, for shrugging off the girl's protests, Easton said, as well as for taking her to a clinic to be fitted for an internal birth-control device when she reached puberty in the early 1970s.

The now 50-year-old, who goes by Vicki Waters, testified she didn't know an IUD had been inserted until she was married.

"For a long time he had been living a lie," Easton told Justice Nancy Morrison, who ruled last year that Bains was liable for repeated assaults on the now mother-of-two teens while she lived on his farm from age nine to her graduation from high school in 1975.

"It's time he was held to account to the public but more importantly to the Sikh community," he said.

"[His lawyers] say he has suffered condemnation in the community but there is no evidence of that. It's about time that occurred."

Easton said Canadian judges have shied away from handing down hefty damages awards in order not to parrot U.S. courts that prefer to award windfalls to injured citizens.

"It's time we did away with that, especially in cases like this where someone's life has been destroyed."

Factor inflation into the historical worst-case sexual assault award and $318,000 would not be out of whack for Waters' pain and suffering as well as for the frequency and horrific nature of the assaults, which included oral and anal sex as well as physical thrashings.

The elderly couple, formerly active in the federal Liberal party, also violated their position of trust to protect and watch over their niece, he said, a breach of fiduciary duty that could attract another $175,000.

But lawyers for the Chilliwack couple, successful dairy farmers in their day who own a sizeable chunk of property in the Chilliwack area, said there was no evidence to suggest Waters has suffered any chronic psychology harm as a result of the sexual abuse.

"I'm not saying she hasn't suffered psychological injuries, I'm saying she has not proven she has," Bernie Buettner said, adding it's not for the court to presume the assaults caused chronic emotional damage.

At best, the combined damages should be $70,000 max, he said.

But in her judgment, Morrison, who praised Waters for her courage in coming forward, found the Nelson resident had been deprived of what all kids should be able to take for granted; a normal, trusting childhood. She said Waters has had difficulty socially, sexually and in maintaining a normal marital relationship with her husband.

The judge reserved decision on the figure she intends to award the mom.