Nunavut RCMP probe sexual assault allegation

Nunavut RCMP have brought in special investigators from outside the territory to look into a Pond Inlet woman's allegation that an officer sexually assaulted her, CBC News has learned.

The investigation by an RCMP special crimes unit comes a few years after the woman filed a complaint saying she was raped in an RCMP detachment cell by the male officer, who was stationed in the Baffin Island community at the time. He is no longer based there.

RCMP confirmed that it has asked the unit to investigate the matter.

The alleged victim, whose name has been withheld to protect her identity, told CBC News that investigators interviewed her in Pond Inlet earlier this week.

In an interview, the woman said she had been drinking late one afternoon when she was arrested and taken into custody for causing a public disturbance.

In a complaint she later filed with the RCMP, the woman claimed the male officer failed to call for a female colleague, but instead entered her cell and said he would teach her a lesson for calling him names and swearing at him.

The officer then locked the cell, she said, adding that she kicked him, scratched him and pulled his hair in an attempt to get him out of the cell.

"He took his night stick, billy club, from his pants and he hit me on my stomach … when I fell down, my stomach was hurting really bad," she said.

The woman said she was briefly knocked out. When she regained consciousness, he was sexually assaulting her, she said.

"He raped me. I was crying for help and nobody was inside the cell. There was only me and [the officer] inside the building," she said.

The woman said she later went to the Pond Inlet health centre, where she said health-care workers found broken ribs. Staff also did a sexual assault test on her, she said.

The woman said she recently asked Pond Inlet RCMP what happened to the investigation, given it was so long since the incident, and was told her clothes and other possible evidence had been accidentally destroyed.

"They said they threw it out and they burned it," she said.

Police have not given an explanation to date as to why it took several years to formally investigate the woman's complaint, and why the investigation started only after CBC News began making calls about it.