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TRIAL OPENS FOR TRIO ACCUSED OF FORCING 11-YEAR-OLD INTO SEX TRADE
Lindsay Kines
On the police videotape, the 11-year-old Portland girl tells a dramatic story.
She claims that in February of this year, she drove to Vancouver with two men, a woman
and a child. She says she was put out to work as a prostitute almost immediately, working
for 12-hour stretches with breaks of only 60 or 90 minutes, when she was expected to
service her alleged pimp.
She claims to have stayed at a series of hotels, slept only four hours in four days, while
being force-fed pills to keep her awake, and to have made up to $800 before she was
picked up by Vancouver police, who arrested the two men and the woman.

When the story first surfaced in February, it made national headlines. But on the first day
of a trial in Vancouver provincial court Tuesday, defence lawyers appeared to poke a
series of holes in the statement that raised questions about the girl's credibility.

During cross-examination late Tuesday, a Vancouver vice detective admitted investigators
failed to do certain checks to confirm the accuracy of the girl's statement -- the main piece
of evidence at the trial.

During cross-examination late Tuesday, a Vancouver vice detective admitted investigators
failed to do certain checks to confirm the accuracy of the girl's statement -- the main piece
of evidence at the trial.

In particular, the girl told police that she and the three accused left Portland on the evening
of Feb. 21, arriving in Vancouver about 1 a.m. on Feb. 22. But when asked by defence
lawyer Ian Donaldson if police had checked to confirm when the girl and her companions
reached the Douglas border crossing, Detective Raymond Payette said he had not done
so.

Donaldson then asked how it would change the girl's story if it could be shown that the car
in fact crossed the border at 5 a.m. on Feb. 23 -- just 31 hours before the girl was picked
up by police. And Payette agreed that "it changes a lot of what was said, yes."

Outside court, Donaldson said he is prepared to call just that evidence in an attempt to
undermine the credibility of the girl's statement.

"If the Crown won't admit it, I intend to call the witness to prove it," he said.

The veracity of the girl's videotaped statement to police is crucial because the girl failed to
show for the trial and defence lawyers are therefore unable to cross-examine her. The
case against Jabari McCrory, David Martin Walker and Milenda Mae Carter hinges on
whether Judge William Kitchen admits the 11-year-old girl's statement to police as evidence
-- a decision that will depend, in part, on the reliability of that statement, which was played
in court Tuesday.

Donaldson and Lawrence Myers grilled Payette for three hours Tuesday about what they
contend are inconsistencies in the girl's story and a lack of corroborating evidence.

Payette testified he believed the girl's story and viewed her as a vulnerable victim.

But Myers attempted to portray the young girl as a "hard-nosed" liar, thief and prostitute,
who looked and talked much older than she was and claimed to have worked as a
prostitute in Oregon before ever coming to Vancouver.

Myers also suggested police either failed to investigate or were unable to confirm her
allegations that the accused kept a gun in the trunk of the car, that she had stayed at a
series of hotels in Vancouver, that she had gone out to purchase new clothes while here,
and that she had been assaulted by two of the accused and a couple of bad clients.

Myers also claimed police never determined what became of the $800 the girl claimed to
have earned while in Vancouver.

"It's unfortunate that further investigation wasn't carried out at the time," Donaldson said
outside court. "I'm not sure there's a single thing in what she says which is corroborated in
the evidence."

But in an interview, Crown counsel Henry Reiner defended the girl's statement to police,
saying nobody's memory is perfect.

"It's unfortunate that she may be out by a day," he said.

"She's an 11-year-old. I don't care what these people say -- she's a young, vulnerable girl."