Reginald Joseph O’Keefe (left) was back in Newfoundland Supreme Court in St. John’s Thursday for the continuance of his trial. O’Keefe is representing himself, while defence lawyer Richard Deveau is helping with cross-examination.
But on March 2014, when she typed in Reginald O’Keefe’s name in Google and saw his photo, a steam of memories came flooding back.
“I lost my mind,” the woman said, testifying at O’Keefe’s trial Thursday at Newfoundland Supreme Court in St. John’s.
“I got very upset. I was crying. ... I was devastated. It’s like I was back there ... I was back at that age again, back at that time.”
The woman — whose name is protected under by a publication ban — said she immediately recognized O’Keefe as being that same man.
The photo was on images from recent media publications of O’Keefe’s conviction in 2012, two years after he sexually molested a three-year-old girl.
He was much older, with white hair, but she said she was “99.9 per cent” sure it was him.
“The eyes gave him away,” she said.
She is one of four women who claim O’Keefe sexually assaulted them. The incidents were said to have happened in two locations — one in Labrador and the other on the island — over three decades, the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
The 70-year-old faces six counts of indecent assault, as it was called in the Criminal Code decades ago.
The woman who testified Thursday said she was eight years old when the incident happened to her.
She was sleeping at a friend’s house in Labrador City when she awoke to see a man hovering over her bed. She began crying and her friend ran out of the room. No adults were home at the time, she said.
The man put her on his knee and began rubbing her in private areas of her body outside and under her nightgown. All the time, she said, he was promising that he would take her to the mall to buy her new boots and presents, “trying to bribe me.”
“It seemed like forever,” she said when asked by Crown prosecutor Dana Sullivan how long the touching lasted.
The woman said she didn’t initially see the man’s face, since it was so dark, but when he sat her on his lap, she said she could see his face clearly, as the light from the hall was shining in the room.
The woman said she was crying so hard, she assumed it got O’Keefe so irritated that he left the room.
“I was so scared,” she said.
Once she heard the front door close, she said she ran out downstairs and met up with her friend, who had a knife in her hand.
She said the both of them ran to a neighbour’s house and the police were called.
She said her friend was questioned in the police car, but officers never did question her, “which I couldn’t understand.”
The woman — who moved out of Labrador City when she was 18 and lives in Ontario — said she tried to forget the incident, but every two or three years, she would search his name on Google.
Nothing came up, she said, because she had been typing in “Reggie O’Keefe.” When she typed in his full name, that’s when she saw the photo and then the articles on him.
She went to police in Ontario, who relayed the information to authorities in this province.
“It’s bothered me over the year,” she said, when answering a question by Justice Garrett Handrigan as to why she came forward. “To me, this is closure.”
The woman’s mother is scheduled to testify Friday.
