WARNING: This article may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
A now nine-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by a priest last year in Little Grand Rapids First Nation told court on Tuesday she remembers feeling scared as the priest allegedly walked her to his bedroom inside the church that day.
The girl, who cannot be identified because of a publication ban, said that Arul Savari then took his clothes off. She said Savari, who she called “Father Arul,” told her he loved her, touched her legs and her “belly” and kissed her.
Savari, who sat behind a screen that prevented the girl from seeing him as she testified, pleaded not guilty to sexual assault, sexual interference and forcible confinement on the first day of his judge-alone trial before Court of King’s Bench Justice Shawn Greenberg.
Court heard both direct testimony from the girl, who clutched a stuffed animal as she spoke from the witness box, and a video recording of the statement she gave after the alleged assault in 2023.
“When I was at the church, I guess, that priest — you know that priest who works at the church?” she said to the person taking her statement in the video played in court. “Father Arul. He did something gross to me.”
The girl said as she left the church that day, Savari told her not to tell her mom what happened. But she said she did anyway, which led to police being contacted about the alleged incident in her home community, a remote First Nation about 265 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.
WATCH |Â Court hears from 9-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by Manitoba priest:
Court heard the girl also alleged that the same day, Savari asked her to shower with him, held her hand so tightly she worried he would to break it, threatened to cut her finger with a knife and tried to make her sniff gas.
She also alleged she was able to briefly lock Savari in a room by putting a chair under a door handle before he broke out.
Defence questions girl’s story
Savari’s lawyers raised questions about some of those allegations, saying that the girl didn’t initially share all those details when she reported what she said happened to her mother.
Defence lawyer Tom Rees also noted inconsistencies in the account the girl gave in her statement, including about whether Savari’s underwear had been removed.
Rees instead suggested none of the things the girl alleged actually happened, in a line of questioning the child repeatedly responded to with a soft “yes.”
“I say that while you were at the church that nobody tried to touch you on your belly and kiss you. That’s what I say really happened. Is that right?” Rees asked in one of the last of those questions, before Justice Greenberg suggested the girl was getting confused by the way the questions were worded.
“It would be odd that she would be agreeing to all of these propositions,” the judge said.
That led to the girl being asked to leave the courtroom as the lawyers and judge discussed the best way to phrase the questions in a way the girl could understand.
When the girl returned, Rees asked her a few more questions that included a suggestion about what the defence says really happened at the church that day.
Savari was a priest at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Little Grand Rapids. This photo was posted to his Facebook page in December 2018. (Arul Savari/Facebook)
He alleged the girl and her sister were supposed to get paid to help clean the church — but when the girl’s sister didn’t show up, Savari told the girl to go home and come back when her sister was with her.
“So when he told you to go home, you felt upset about that. And that’s because you were there and you wanted to do the cleaning and then have the money,” Rees said.
Manitoba RCMP announced the charges against Savari in May 2023 and said they’d identified other possible victims.
Mounties spokesperson Sgt. Paul Manaigre said in an email Tuesday that the investigation into Savari “is still very much ongoing at this time.”
Savari was also the priest at the nearby Pauingassi First Nation, RCMP said at the time of his arrest. He’s originally from India and lived in Winnipeg and had been in Canada for six years at the time of his arrest, and had served in Little Grand Rapids for the same amount of time, Mounties said.
Little Grand Rapids and Pauingassi First Nations are remote communities in eastern Manitoba. RCMP said Arul Savari served in his role as priest in both communities. (CBC)
Following his arrest, Savari was suspended from all ministerial duties and “forbidden to have anything to do with former parishioners and children,” according to a 2023 news release from the Archdiocese of St. Boniface.
Savari’s trial continues Wednesday.
For anyone who has been sexually assaulted, there is support available through crisis lines and local support services via the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.