Potential new text message evidence delays verdict at Calgary woman's indecent assault trial in Dartmouth

Editor’s note: This article contains details readers may find disturbing.

A Calgary woman’s trial in Dartmouth on a historical charge of indecent assault took a bizarre turn Tuesday, just as the judge was about to deliver the verdict.

Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Scott Norton ended up adjourning his decision to allow the prosecution to investigate a text message the complainant had shown Crown attorney Carla Ball about 15 minutes earlier, as she was arriving at the courthouse.

Ball told the judge the text appears to contain an “admission against interest.”

She said prosecutors wanted time to look into the message and explore their options, which include applying to reopen their case and introduce the text as evidence against Mary Isabelle Mansfield.

The other options, Ball said, are to seek a mistrial or to do nothing and receive the verdict.

Ball, who is prosecuting the case with Sara Adams, told the court it was not clear when the admission was allegedly made by Mansfield but she thinks it was after all the evidence was called at trial.

She did not indicate if there was a middle person involved.

Norton took a short break to think about the Crown’s adjournment request before coming back into the courtroom and inviting input from the defence.

Mansfield, 69, joined Tuesday’s proceeding via a video link.

Defence lawyer Carbo Kwan said she had just learned of the new information from the Crown.

“I haven’t been able to appreciate what the potential new evidence is,” Kwan said. “My concern is that we are at the stage where we are ready to receive the verdict, and I don’t know if there’s enough relevance of this ‘new evidence’ to adjourn the verdict.”

The judge said he is “equally in the dark” on the relevance of the new information.

“But it seems to me to be reasonable to provide the Crown with a couple of weeks to further consider the matter, investigate whatever might have to be investigated, and advise the court of what their position is,” Norton said.

“That may then require the scheduling of a further hearing, depending on what happens. If nothing comes of it, then we can reschedule the verdict very quickly. If it’s something else, we’ll deal with it as that requires.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves in that respect.”

Norton scheduled the case to return to court Nov. 2 to set a new date, either for the verdict or for the Crown to apply to call additional evidence.

Ball did not wish to comment on the development outside court.

Mansfield is accused of applying Vaseline to the anus of a teenage girl before she allegedly was raped by her former husband at their Dartmouth apartment sometime in 1978 or 1979.

There’s a publication ban on the identity of the complainant, who was 15 when she moved in with Mansfield and Trueman Roland (Rollie) Hughes in the summer of 1978.

The girl lived with the couple until July 1979, when she moved to Calgary to reside with Hughes’s family. She was pregnant with Hughes’s baby at the time but had a miscarriage.

About 45 years went by before the woman contacted police in Halifax in 2024 to report that she had been sexually abused by Hughes and Mansfield.

Hughes was charged with two counts of indecent assault and single counts of gross indecency, rape and having sexual intercourse with a female between the ages of 14 and 16.

He was supposed to go on trial with Mansfield last month but passed away Aug. 13 at the age of 77. The trial proceeded Sept. 8 on just the charge of indecent assault against Mansfield.

The complainant testified that she remembers being on top of the couple’s bed with them one afternoon. She said everyone was naked and Hughes was between the two females, taking turns kissing them.

The woman said she recalls being on her stomach and feeling Mansfield applying Vaseline to her. She said Hughes then tried to sodomize her before having vaginal intercourse with her without her consent.

The age of consent at the time was 14. The woman said the situation on the bed made her “uncomfortable.” She said she didn’t want Mansfield to put Vaseline on her or for Hughes to force himself on her.

The complainant said she told her husband many years later that she had been abused by Hughes. But she never mentioned any alleged abuse by Mansfield to anyone until July 2024, when she gave a recorded statement to police.

On cross-examination, Kwan questioned the woman about inconsistencies between what she told police and what she testified to in court. The woman admitted she was not certain exactly when the incident occurred and may have misremembered some details, but she insisted she knows “exactly what happened” in the bedroom that day.

Mansfield, who has a 1983 conviction for gross indecency, took the stand and vigorously denied that the incident happened.

In closing arguments Sept. 10, Kwan said the complainant was not a credible or reliable witness and that it would be “dangerous” for the judge to convict her client based on the evidence of the Crown’s lone witness.

Ball argued that while the complainant had trouble recalling some details about her life in the 1970s, her memory of the “core allegation” was not shaken on cross-examination. She said Mansfield’s evidence did not raise reasonable doubt.

Hughes had multiple convictions for sexual offences going back to 1983.