Victim impact statement - 6 February 2013 - Port Coquitlam Provincial Court

Dennis can tell the court room and everyone in it that you did it without thinking and that you've learned from it and that you've changed but I don't believe that either.

You don't do something like that without realizing that it was wrong and without thinking how it would effect people's live.

When you sent those pictures around was immoral and immature and the fact that you thought it was funny is selfish.

I don't understand how you can hurt someone so badly and believe that it isn't a big deal.

The numbers stories that have been put out there as to what happened to me that night so from one extreme to another.

Everyone was on some kind of level of intoxication so it's near impossible to get the real story and this is mine:

I had heard about a Bangkok party in Pitt Meadows the weekend before the one I went to.

I was told it was a huge party and a lot of fun and that another one was happening the weekend coming up.

Tickets were being sold and you could buy them off someone who would drop them off to you.

I gave my friend money for a ticket and a ticket for a friend of mine.

He told me later he couldn't make it so I gave it to another friend of mine.

We showed up at this party, gave the guy our tickets and we told to have a good time.

Yeah  - just like everyone else at the party, we did bring alcohol although I was the one planning to drive back home so I didn't drunk as I normally would at a party.

I probably need to stay responsible for my friends at such a huge party and getting us all home safe and sound.

My friends and I met up with two of our other friends and we established a meeting spot that was outside the barn so if one of us got lost or detached from the group, we could go to the spot.

We had a pretty big group of friends, we would go in the barn and dance, come back out when we were too tired or wanted a smoke or whatever the reason was.

I was having the time of my life, hanging out with my friends, dancing, singing and laughing.

I was offered caps of Ecstasy and I rejected the offer because, like I said before, I wanted to be responsible for my friends and drugs were never my thing.

I was dancing with this guy and I got detached from my friends and he offered me a drink.

My whole life I've been told, when you go to the bar, cover your drink with your hand, never leave it unattended, never take a drink from a stranger at a party - blah, blah, blah.

I was well educated on the do's and don'ts at a party but I did it anyway - I took a drink from a stranger.

I decided after I took the drink, I needed to go get my friends.So I left the guy and went to our meeting spot and there everybody was.

I can't remember since it's been two years now how many times we went back to the barn to dance.

We all decided it was time to leave but [friend] and I decided - hey, let's go into the bar one last time.

We walked in and it was clearing up so we decided to go up to the DJ booth and dance up there since we had never been up there before.

We were dancing up there and we were joined by some guy who put his arms around both of us.

I started to feel uncomfortable so I told Morgan I was going back to the group and I would see her at our meeting spot.

I started towards the stairs and walk down them but I don't even remember walking all the way down them, I totally blacked out.This was about 15 minutes after I had taken a drink from another male.

I have no recollection of meeting Mr. McMorris or going outside with him.

The next few things that I can remember are the fuzziest weirdest memories I've ever had.

They are not even solid memories. They are fragments.

I remember seeing a light in my face. I hasn't any clue where my body was or what it was doing.

I remember hearing somebody saying "keep fucking her bro" [sobs loudly]

Yet I have no recollection of what was going on and then my cell phone ringing and the ring tone fading away from me.

After that, it was all black again

Then next thing I can remember is being in a moving vehicle and people moving erratically beside me like they were dancing in their seats.

I was actually in a taxi on the way back to my friend's house. I have no idea who paid for it or who called it.

The next thing I know I am using someone else's phone and calling my brother to tell him to come pick me up and that my cell phone was stolen.

He told me he was at  work and he couldn't come get me.

I wake up on my friend's couch in her back room and I have never felt so weird after waking up after a night of partying. I was groggy

and fuzzy headed and it felt like I had gone on a 300 mile run, with all the sweat drying on my skin. 

I felt awful.I got up and took out my hair extension which were a total mess.

And that's when I realized that something had happened last night that I had no recollection of.

I went on my Facebook only to read messages from my friends asking me if I was that girl last night.I said "no" because I honestly did not know that I was.

I went into the living room where my girlfriends were watching a movie and one of them looked at me and said: "I just got a text saying that there's pictures of a girl getting eaten out on Facebook and they are of you.

My heart sank and I knew it must be me. With all the messages I'd been getting and the condition of my body, I put two and two together.

I went home and I sat in our office all day, dealing with the messages I was getting.

Things like: "Nice pictures" "How classy, you mutt"  and other that I won't even dare to repeat.

I tried so hard to get these pictures off Facebook.

Getting my friends to add Dennis and JC on Facebook, I reported the pictures. I cried all day. I could hardly even see what I was typing.

The next day, a very close friend of mine forced me to go to hospital and get a rape check.

I didn't want to go at all. I was later told that the nurse found injuries on my genitals and inside of me, as well.

The nurse, my friend and her mom - who is practically my second mom - told me that I had to tell my parents.

I went home and I just couldn't build up the courage to tell my mom. How do you tell your loving parents that something that horrific has happened to you.

I went into the living room where my mom was. She told me I had to go to bed cause I had school the next day and it's a pain to wake me up in the morning.

I sat beside her and I think she knew that something was up because I stared at the T.V. for 10 minutes, trying to figure out how to tell her this.

I looked at her: " Hey mom, remember that party I went to on Friday."

She looked at me and I continued.

"Well, something happened."

I burst into tears and I couldn't stop. Sh grabbed me in her arms and she told it was OK and I could tell her.

I continued to choke out things, that I had been raped and that [a friend] and her mom took me to the hospital that day.

She just held me, uncontrollably crying. She started to cry too.

She went and got my dad and told him what I had told her.

They both came into the living room and told me I had to go to police but I refused to.

The next day, a car drove up the driveway. 

My dad walked in and I heard two other males with him.My dad introduced them to me as police officers.

They sat down in front of me and said an anonymous person had come forth with images and asked me what had happened.

I started bawling and I couldn't even get a single word out.

I pointed to my mom and she told them what she knew.

They told me I had to come down and make a statement.

They left and I refused to go down and make a statement. I didn't want anything to do with it. In the end, I went down to the police station and told them what I knew.And that was that. In the end people were charged.I had lost most of my friends and I became a total mess.

What happened that night should have stayed between the people involved and dealt with privately.

But because you made the decision to make these photos public, everyone from one end of town to the other has seen these disgusting and disconcerting pictures of the incident.

That should never have happened.

Not to dramatize how this has affected me, but I can say with 100 per cent certainty that your actions actually ruined my life.

Before any of this happened, I was a preppy, happy girl that never has any problems, other than the fact that my nail polish didn't match my outfit.

I was there for my friends when they needed someone to talk to. I loved going to school, being around people and meeting new ones.

That all changed very quickly though. After that night, i became stressed out, paranoid, depressed and angry and totally closed off person.

I have never been good at expressing my feelings and for two years now, I have bottled up anger, sadness and depression.

Because of bottling up all these feelings, I get angry very easily and flip out at the littlest things.

My parents have had to deal with me freaking out at them for the littlest things for over two years now.

It almost feels like I’m screaming for someone to help me but no one can hear me because I don't know what to say.

I don't like people trying to help me either because I've been judged so much in the past two years that if I talk to someone about how I am feeling and what I went through that they might look at me differently and I just can't handle that.

I have lost friends and nobody looks at me for the good things I do anymore.

In spite of mentally destroying me, your actions have also caused me to develop insomnia.

Every time I fall asleep, I have a nightmare about what happened that night and I wake up crying and can't fall asleep afterwards.

So after a while I just stopped sleeping and for the first time in my life, I was having panic attacks and very high anxiety especially when I go out.

For the first time in my life, I thought about taking my life. my close friends had the burden of making sure I didn't do anything stupid.

Although month by month, it is getting easier to come to grips with what happened.I know how it hurt me and still find little ways that it has changed me and altered the ways of the girl I used to be, the one every body loved so much.

It drastically changed my life. I dropped out of high school because of constant bullying.

I couldn't concentrate on anything in class and felt as though people were laughing at me, talking about me and staring at me.

I became paranoid.  By dropping out of school cause me to have to do two years of high school in my grade 12 year.

A year that is supposed to be the best year of your life, I spent sitting in a class room for six hours and then sitting in a continued education class room for three hours, five days a week.

And I missed out on the freedom of a normal teenager.

The thought of what happened nauseates me whenever I think about it. I have become someone I am not content with.There was a time when I turned to substances to help me cope and try to forget what was going on and what had happened.

I am proud to be a [surname] but I feel like because of what happened it has ruined my family name and I live with that burden everyday.

For two years, I was bullied especially over Facebook and Twitter.People verbally attacked me and my family, spreading lies. My life was threatened and I was continuously harassed.To go into a social media site and see posts about you that are not true is one of the worst things that can happen to you.It makes you feel very unsettled. It makes you feel like you are abominated.

The things people said about mu family and me makes me wonder what kind of society we live in.For people to think it's OK to harass someone and their family to the extent that they did is callous, uncivil and its' a bitter pill to swallow.

Honestly, it's like being tortured on a daily basis and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

People say that it will get better and that the pain will go away but it's been two years and it still kills me.

I feel powerless. I can't cheer myself up when I am in despair and I can't stop crying once I start.And I can't stop my anger, once I'm enraged.

The amount of good times is less than the amount of bad times I have now.

What Dennis did to me completely changed the person I was.No amount of apologies can make me contend with what I have become.

The word "rage" isn't even strong enough for my feelings towards you.What you have did has made me bitter and irate and dejected.Your actions were immoral, immature and just plain right stupid.

As someone who is younger than you, I wouldn't think of doing that to someone.What type of person does that to another human being.

At some point in my life, I want to have kids but I don't know how I can protect them from a society with people like Dennis in it.

I can't even imagine how my parents feel about all of this.I would break.

In what kind of society is it OK to laugh and joke at someone's reality and pain? 

How can I protect my family from a society that is so self-absorbed that they don't care about anyone else's but themselves?

How can I make sure that my child didn't grow up to be just like that?

To the teenagers and young adults that have been harassing me for two years now, how would you feel if the things being said about me were being said about your sister or your girlfriend?

People that continue to harass me, I hope your parents know what rotten, little children they have.

I know better not to take drinks from someone I don't know because someone can put a drug in it, yet I did so I feel guilty about what happened to me that night.To have such heavy guilt on your shoulders, crushes you like you couldn't believe.Or if I had done things differently that night, if I didn't go to the party, what would my life be like now? 

I have to live with this guilt for the rest of my life.I know what happened isn't my fault but I feel like it is.

I cannot live up to the expectations of my family now. you know how hard that is. I feel like a failure because of what Dennis did.and I feel ashamed and disgusted because of what happened. Hopeless is a really good word to describe it.

I almost live a double life - one where I go out and put on a fake smile and pretend like I'm ok, having a great time. Another one where I'm at home, angry, irritable and overall just extremely emotional.

Before this happened, I had a great relationship with my family. We hardly ever fought but now it's seems like whoever we talk a fight arises out of it.

This has affected us all so deeply and even if none of us realizes it, it has changed us completely.

With all that being said, i will sum it up.

Dennis, you have destroyed the person that I used to be. You changed my life for the worse.You have caused me severe emotional pain and damage.and your actions put my life on hold for two years.

I try my hardest to want to get up in the morning.You have made me question the society I live in.I am not saying this to get sympathy from anyone because I don't want that.But I just want to stand up here and tell you how your idiotic actions affected my family and me. It is really hard to grasp what happened, to look at yourself nowand realize that the past cannot be changed.

I look back at what happened and think all that time - what could I have done differently?

If I didn't go to that party, what would my life be like now? 

A person can sit for hours and ponder all these questions that run through their mind but what's the use?

I have to tell myself that the past is the past and I can never change it and that I have grown from the person that I was but it's hard.

I can stand up here and call you a bunch of things but then I would be any better than you and your friends would I.

I know mistakes are made and you happened to make a very big one but if you had thought about what you did for even two seconds, thought about the person in the pictures as a real person, someone who lives in this town, has family and friends, just a normal person.But hey, maybe if I post these pictures, it's going to really upset them, that their peers will see things that no one else should see.

If you had thought for two seconds about what you were actualy doing, maybe this life altering mistake would have never happened.

I don't blame Dennis' parents for his actions and I don't solely blame Dennis. There were how many of you guys at White Spot that morning? 

I personally think you are all to blame. No one stood up and told you not to post them.

I have lots more to say but I don't think you want to listen to me talk for much longer.

The last thing I'll say is I honestly hope deep down that you did learn from this mistake.