City man punched woman for withholding sex
Robert Gordon Quondam, 53, admits to assaults, but Crown will withdraw sex charges
A Fredericton man sent a woman to hospital after punching her in the face when she refused to have sex with him, a court heard Tuesday.
Robert Gordon Quondam, 53, of Union Street, appeared in Fredericton provincial court in custody Tuesday, scheduled to go to trial on April 8 counts of assault causing bodily harm and sexual assault on the same woman.
There was a court-ordered publication ban in place protecting the identity of the victim.
Though the court initially heard some testimony from the victim Tuesday morning, when the matter reconvened in the afternoon, prosecutor Matthew Paik and defence lawyer Wanda Severns told Judge Natalie LeBlanc they had resolved the matter.
Quondam maintained his not-guilty pleas on the counts of assault causing bodily harm and sexual assault, but he pleaded guilty to the lesser, included offence of summary assault.
Paik said the victim was at Quondam’s northside apartment the evening of April 8.
“The accused wanted to have sex with [her],” the prosecutor said, noting she refused.
That’s when Quondam pushed her onto the bed and struck her in the face.
“He instructed her to be quiet,” Paik said.
He noted there were evidentiary issues, so the Crown was offering no facts on the extent or nature of the woman’s injuries.
Quondam acknowledged that’s what happened, and LeBlanc found him guilty of the summary assault.
The offender was also scheduled to stand trial Wednesday on earlier charges involving the same victim.
He’d previously denied summary counts of assault, sexual assault, unlawful confinement and probation violation, all alleged to have occurred in Chipman between June 10-11, 2022.
But Paik and Severns told the judge Tuesday they’d resolved that matter as well.
Quondam pleaded guilty to the assault and the breach of probation.
Paik said on the night of June 10, 2022, Quondam attended a location in Chipman, and again, he struck her in the face and grabbed her hair after she denied him sex.
LeBlanc scheduled Quondam’s sentencing hearing for March 26, and she ordered the preparation of a pre-sentence report and victim-impact statement for consideration at that time.
Court heard the sexual-assault charges and the unlawful confinement allegations were expected to be withdrawn following sentencing.
Paik noted that as part of the resolution agreement, the Crown was consenting to the offender’s release pending that sentencing hearing, subject to the conditions of a release order.
Among the conditions of that order are for Quondam to have no contact with the victim, to stay away from her, to possess no weapons and to attend court as required.
‘He wanted to have sex, and I didn’t want to’
Ahead of Tuesday afternoon’s resolution of the two sets of charges, LeBlanc heard testimony from the victim about the events of April 8.
“He wanted to have sex, and I didn’t want to. And he beat me up,” she said.
“I was crying. I was asking, ‘How could you do this to me?’”
The woman said Quondam struck her in the face several times, sometimes with a closed fist, sometimes with an open hand.
“I kept on passing out from the pain, the pain in my face. It hurt so bad,” she said.
Quondam told her to go to the hospital, the woman said, but he also told her to tell medical staff that she’d fallen on her face, which she did.
“And they didn’t believe me,” she said.
Severns objected repeatedly during the witness’s testimony about her hospital visit, because she kept referring to what nurses and doctors said to her, which was hearsay.
“I was put in a private room because they didn’t believe I fell on my face,” the woman said. “They kept me overnight.”
At one point, a doctor spoke with her, she said, and he kept grilling her about how she was injured, telling her there was no way she’d sustained the severe bruising and broken bone in the manner she’d relayed.
“I still stuck to my word that no one beat me up or nothing,” the victim said.
The Crown entered photos of the woman’s bruised face as exhibits at the trial. Those were taken by a police officer, but four days after the assault.
The victim said it was when she went for a “scan” - the nature of which she didn’t specify - that she told the technician what had really happened.
“I told her the truth, and I told her not to tell anybody,” she said.
At no time did the woman relay any information about any kind of sexual assault at that time, even when Paik asked her if Quondam had done anything else to her on that date.
By the end of the woman’s direct examination by the Crown, there was no evidence before the court about a sexual assault.
It was during Tuesday’s lunch break, ahead of the defence’s cross-examination of the witness, that the lawyers and Quondam agreed to the resolution of the various charges.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.