A young Whitehorse man has been found guilty of sexually assaulting his niece.

Territorial court judge Peter Chisholm handed down his decision Friday, after a five-day trial in September. Both the accused, the complainant and other family members testified.

A date will be set for sentencing.

The man cannot be identified, as he was under the age of 18 at the time of the offence.

He faced six charges, including sexual assault, sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching involving his sister’s daughter.

She first told her mother about what happened last year. She alleged there were three incidents between 2010 and 2011 when he engaged in inappropriate sexual activity with her.

Chisholm’s finding of guilt pertains to one of these, in March of 2011, when the complainant was at her grandparents’ house with her uncle.

They were in his bedroom, on the bottom bunk. With the girl lying on her stomach, the young man got on top of her and put his penis against her buttocks.

She testified he told her he’d let her watch a movie if she let him “do it once more” to her.

Afterwards, she pulled up her pants and watched the movie.

Chisholm acquitted the man of the other charges due to inconsistencies in the girl’s testimony, which raised a reasonable doubt other crimes took place, he said.

The accused denied all the allegations, but Chisholm said the man’s “categorical denials” – that he spent little time with his niece growing up, that he was rarely home because he was involved in many activities and sports, and that the two were never alone together – were not credible.

That was especially true since she and her brother spent some months living with the boy and his parents at their home, the judge said.

He was “focused on establishing limited contact between him and the complainant, regardless of the question asked,” the judge said.

He thought the young man crafted certain evidence to remove the opportunity that anything could have happened between him and the girl, the judge added.

On that day in March, court heard, the young man’s mother went to the laundromat, leaving the girl and her brother at home with their uncle and disobeying a condition imposed by territorial Child and Family Services officials.

In 2010, he was investigated by the RCMP after another one of his nieces alleged she’d been sexually abused by him. He was never charged, but his mother was advised he was not to be left alone with younger female relatives.

His mother testified that she had a plan that day: she intended to make two trips to the laundromat, the first with a full truck of laundry bags and two of her children. Then she planned to return home to pick up her son and two grandchildren.

She couldn’t bring her son with her on the first trip, she said, because he didn’t have a clean shirt to wear. And the truck was too full of laundry to bring all the kids at once.

This was “incredible,” Chisholm said.

While the man’s mother was at the laundromat, two social workers dropped by the family home, and were alarmed to find him with his niece, unsupervised.

Both social workers testified that they then headed to the laundromat and told his mother she had to return to the house.

She’d only just arrived at the laundromat, she said, but Chisholm suggested she was trying to minimize the timeframe he was at home with the girl, to suggest there wasn’t a chance for anything to have happened.

The girl’s testimony, which came in the form of two video statements she gave to police last year, as well as questioning by Crown and defence lawyers during the trial, with the victim sitting in a nearby witness room and appearing via video in the courtroom, “is the crux of this matter,” Chisholm said.

Her ability to recount details was impressive, he said, and she gave detailed accounts of the allegations.

Chisholm noted minor inconsistencies, which are to be expected in any witness’ testimony, he said. But particular consideration must be given to children’s evidence.

“When assessing the credibility of child witnesses, I am not to hold them to adult standards,” he said.

It’s necessary to be cognizant of a child’s development and age at the time of offences.

But he could not ignore one “significant” inconsistency in her testimony.

When she was interviewed by the RCMP in 2010, during the investigation into the alleged sexual assault of another niece, she told officers she’d never taken off her clothes in front of any of her uncles, nor had she seen any of them naked.

But she said to police last year that her uncle sexually assaulted her in his bedroom prior to the March 2011 incident, when both were naked.

Another time, she said, he asked her to touch his penis – later leading to one of the invitation to sexual touching charges.

While it could be true that the girl was afraid to tell police the truth in 2010, her non-disclosure raised a reasonable doubt that those incidents took place, Chisholm said.

For this reason, he acquitted the man of four charges.

One of the sexual interference charges, which is sexual assault against a minor, was stayed because it and the sexual assault charge he was convicted of pertained to the same incident.