Former Ilisaqsivik director stands trial for sexual assault

This story was updated on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, at 7:15 a.m. ET.

During the first day of the sexual assault trial of the former director of a Clyde River not-for-profit Monday, the complainant testified describing what she said occurred in December 2020.

When Malcolm Ranta was charged in July 2022 with sexual assaulting a woman, he was the director of the Ilisaqsivik Society, which runs Inuktitut-language counselling and community wellness programs in Clyde River and other Nunavut communities.

Ilisaqsivik placed Ranta on leave in November 2022. By February 2024, the organization had hired a new executive director and said Ranta was no longer an employee.

The woman who accused Ranta of sexual assault was the only witness to testify Monday, the first day of the trial taking place in an Iqaluit courtroom. A court order prohibits publication of the woman’s identity.

She said the incident happened the night of Dec. 22, 2020. In June 2022, when she first reported the case to the RCMP, she remembered that date as Jan. 9, 2021.

On Monday, she said she had had time to think about it and is now sure that she was mistaken.

She testified that on the night of the alleged sexual assault, she went to Ranta’s home after going drinking with a friend. She said she considered Ranta a family friend.

“I knew I would be safe there,” she testified. “I wasn’t.”

During the night out, she had a conflict with her friend whom she pushed at some point.

“I was very drunk, but I was aware of what was happening,” she testified.

She said she entered the house where Ranta and a few other people were having a party. She knew some of the people but didn’t recognize them at the time, she said under cross-examination by defence lawyer Solomon Friedman.

She said she charged her phone while talking to Ranta about her trouble with her friend and wanted to leave the house with everybody else at the party, but Ranta stood in front of her asking her not to leave, she said.

When they were alone, they had sex but she didn’t consent to it, she said.

She said she left right afterward to go to her mother’s house and “never talked about it after.”

The woman said multiple times during Friedman’s questioning that, at the time, she didn’t view the incident as sexual assault and if she had, she would have ended any contact with Ranta immediately.

But she didn’t end the contact with Ranta. Friedman presented Facebook messages between October 2020 and May 2021 between Ranta and the woman, describing them as “friendly” and “flirty.” The woman agreed with that characterization.

She confirmed she and Ranta spent time alone again after the alleged assault and had another sexual encounter to which she wasn’t sure she gave consent.

“The way you remember things now, he clearly sexually assaulted you,” Friedman said. “But your memory changed.”

The woman agreed, adding she always had the anger in her but didn’t know what it was.

“When I started talking, I realized,” she said.

She said she only fully realized that what had happened was sexual assault after talking to her partner, who wasn’t present in the courtroom for the trial because he was hunting.

Her partner was “violent” and “controlling” and was often jealous of her and other men, Friedman said, and the woman agreed.

After one allegedly abusive incident, the complainant got a restraining order prohibiting her partner from seeing her. They later broke the order, had sexual relations, and resumed living together.

Cross-examination of the woman is to continue Tuesday.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct when the complainant went to RCMP.