Attacker said, ‘You’re with the devil,’ New Brunswick abduction trial hears

A New Brunswick woman testified Wednesday she was abducted at knifepoint and held captive for nearly a month in a dark basement room where she was sexually assaulted by a stranger who described himself as the devil.

The woman told the trial of Romeo Cormier that she almost lost her will to live in the 26 days she was confined to his apartment but decided she had to survive after seeing news reports of her disappearance and her family’s unrelenting efforts to find her.

She said her ordeal began shortly after 8 p.m. on Feb. 26, 2010, after leaving the Moncton mall where she worked. She was heading to the mall’s parking lot on her way home when she bumped into a man and apologized, court heard.

Cormier — whom she identified in court as her abductor — grabbed her and she saw a knife coming at her face, so she put her hand up and was cut across three knuckles, she told the court.

“I thought I was being robbed,” testified the woman, who can’t be identified due to a publication ban.

“I screamed, ‘Help! Help!'”

She said Cormier then told her, “I’ll put the knife right through you.”

She testified that Cormier initially told her he had just stabbed a man on a nearby street and because police would be looking for a man, not a couple, he made her put her arm around him. But he later said the stabbing story was a lie and that he was outside the mall to “get a woman,” she told the jury.

She said he put a hooded sweatshirt over her and tied their wrists together with a heavy string or rope. He made her walk but when she had trouble keeping up, he said, “I’ll kill you right here,” she testified.

They arrived at a rooming house and she was led to a basement room he rented, she said.

“I was scared to death,” she said in Court of Queen’s Bench, which was packed with her family and friends.

The 55-year-old woman sobbed at times during her testimony. Cormier took notes.

Cormier, 63, has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, forcible confinement, sexual assault, assault with a weapon, theft and uttering death threats.

Crown lawyer Annie St. Jacques asked the woman if she had ever seen Cormier before.

“The first time I ever laid eyes on him was when he grabbed me,” she replied.

Once in the rooming house, she said Cormier tied her hands, put duct tape over her mouth and started rambling, testifying that he said: “What have I done? … I’m not going back to jail.”

She said he went through her purse, looked at her driver’s licence and became incensed when he saw that she was 54 years old. She told the court that he said, “What are you doing dressing the way you are dressing?”

She said he cut up her cellphone, concerned it could be traced, and told her he had done a lot of bad things during his life.

“You’re with the devil,” she quoted him as saying.

She said he told her that if the police came, he would not go back to jail as a kidnapper. He would return as a murderer.

She said he later said, “You’re my woman now. You know what couples do, and I expect you to take care of me.”

During the first night she was held captive he made her smoke marijuana and showed her two prison identifications with the name Romeo Cormier, she said.

He threw most of her clothes and contents of her purse in the garbage and told her to take off her rings, she said.

The woman told the court she was sexually assaulted almost everyday she was held in the basement room where he lived.

She watched suppertime newscasts during which she saw reports of her disappearance, her family’s desperate search to locate her and found out that one of her daughters was pregnant.

She said that was when she decided she had to survive.

“I could see how hurt they were,” she said.

A bucket was left for her to use as a toilet, and Cormier kept an orange-handled knife in plain view, court heard.

She said she would never try to get the knife because he could overpower her, and that she did not scream for help while she was held in captivity.

“I knew if I screamed, at the least he would tie and gag me,” she said.

“I felt time was running out so I did everything he wanted.”

At one point, he grabbed her by the head and told her he would be able to snap her neck, she added.

Cormier only left the house three times while she was there — once to go to the bank, another time to buy marijuana and on March 24, 2010, the day she escaped, she said.

On that day he was in a rush to go to a food bank and didn’t tie her as tightly as he usually did, court heard.

She said once he left, she quickly freed her hands and feet and removed a sock and tape used to gag her.

“I made for the door,” she said.

She ran in front of a courier truck on 6th Street in Moncton on a cold day, wearing just a shirt, underwear and socks.

“The Purolator truck had to stop or run over me,” she said, crying.

“I jumped in the passenger side and I actually got down in the van because I knew he was still in the neighbourhood.”

She said the driver recognized her from news reports and took her to a police station.

“He held onto my hand and all the feelings came back. I had been numb for 26 days.”

St. Jacques asked her how she was faring now.

“I’m a different person,” she said.

“I don’t have independence. I’m a prisoner in my own home. I don’t go out without my husband and I don’t go out after dark. I’m scared of everybody.”

The Crown wrapped up its examination of the woman by having her describe the contents of a video made by the RCMP to show the possible route from the mall she took to the rooming house, and the layout of the basement and the room where she says she was held.

The defence will cross-examine the woman Thursday.

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