A 23-year-old man has been found guilty of raping his female friend in Whitehorse last year, telling her he was “sorry” and that she was “too cute” as she begged him to stop.

Following a December trial in Yukon Supreme Court, during which both the victim and accused testified, Justice Leigh Gower handed down his decision on Dec. 19.

The assault occurred in August 2013.

The woman, now 22, and the man are not identified in Gower’s written decision. Her identity is protected by a publication ban.

At trial, the woman testified she stayed over at the man’s downtown house after a night of drinking with friends. The two had been friends for years. He was also close friends with the woman’s then-fiancé.

She said that although he had been hitting on her that night – trying to hold her hand and kiss her, and disparaging her fiancé – she didn’t have a ride home from the bar they were at, and it would have taken her an hour to walk.

It wasn’t an option for her to stay at her fiancé’s house in Riverdale, because he’d asked for some space from her, she said. And she’d spent the night at the man’s house before with her fiancé.

So she stayed on a couch in his home, and told him to stop acting the way he was and to respect her relationship with her fiancé. The man apologized and she fell asleep.

But she awoke to him on top of her. He’d pushed her pants and underwear down to her ankles and was raping her.

“What the f***, man?” the woman said. “What are you doing?”

She began pushing on his chest in an attempt to get him off of her, but he was much bigger than she was and he bit her “really hard” on the neck, she testified.

The woman started to cry and asked him why he was doing this. He told her he couldn’t help it, and continued for what felt like 10 minutes, she testified.

It was only when she said she would tell her fiancé about the assault that he stopped.

He threw her cell phone at her and demanded she call the other man and tell him that they were in love, she testified.

She did, because she was scared and didn’t know what else to do, she said.

When she had the chance, she ran from the house, all the way to her fiancé’s home in Riverdale. She was crying hard, and said she didn’t make much sense, but she told him what happened.

She spent the night there, and went home to shower the next day.

“I really wanted to get out of those f***ing clothes,” she told the court. “I burned my pants, actually.”

The woman said she was sore, so she went to the hospital to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

The female doctor, who testified at the trial, noted redness and tenderness consistent with rape or rough sex.

The doctor suggested a rape kit, but the woman “just wanted to get out of there,” she said.

She went to police three days later. “I did not want to have to sit here and do this (testify),” she said.

Afterward, the man texted her, saying if she didn’t tell police she was lying, he’d kill himself, she testified.

His defence against the allegation was that the sex was consensual, and that the woman later regretted it and was worried her fiancé would find out so she said she was raped.

“... I do not accept this view of the case,” Gower said.

The judge said he didn’t believe the man’s recounting of events, pointing to several improbabilities and inconsistencies in his testimony, including the fact that the woman had a bruise on her neck, but the man said initially he only kissed her there.

Only after a leading question from his lawyer did he say he might’ve given her a hickey.

Regardless, the RCMP officer who spoke to the woman on Sept. 3, 2013, noted the mark looked like a bruise, not a hickey.

The man also told the court he drove the woman downtown after he’d consumed six beers at Fish Lake with their group of friends.

He was “buzzed,” and not at all drunk. But later, after one more drink at a downtown bar, he said he didn’t offer to drive the woman home because he was too drunk.

The young man was “internally inconsistent and evasive” about his true feelings for her as well, Gower said.

He at first denied having a crush on the woman, but later said he had wanted to sleep with her for a while.

“I further conclude that his evidence is incapable of raising a reasonable doubt,” Gower said.

Defence lawyer André Roothman questioned the woman’s behaviour during and after the assault:

Why did she not scream for help when she woke up to him on top of her? (The man’s mother slept in an adjacent room.) Why did she not go straight to the police?

“The simple answer ... is that trial judges are regularly cautioned by the Supreme Court of Canada not to stereotypically expect victims of sexual assault to respond in predictable or consistent ways,” Gower said, because people respond differently to trauma and violence.

“In short, these propositions smack of the long-discredited historical expectation that victims of sexual assault were expected to raise a public ‘hue and cry’ over such wrongdoing.”

A date has not yet been set for sentencing.