More charges for convicted sex offender
Posted September 29, 2011 5:47 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A man accused of terrorizing women on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has been charged with seven new sex crimes. Four girls between the ages of 14 and 19 claim they were sexually assaulted.
Back in February, Vancouver Police promised they would act on claims a man was giving young women alcohol and drugs until they passed out, and then sexually assaulting them.
This past Tuesday investigators arrested Martin Tremblay as he was being released from jail on other charges. “He was about to get on a bus to come back to Vancouver. We knew he was being released from Ford Mountain Correctional Institution and we shared that information with the RCMP who intercepted him at the bus depot,” explains VPD Inspector Brad Desmarais.
“I want to acknowledge and say thank-you to those young women, the girls who came forward and were so courageous to relive those moments,” says Lisa Yellow-Quill, who works with women on the Downtown Eastside.
Mona Woodward, who works with First Nations women on the Downtown Eastside agrees with Yellow-Quill. “I was completely impacted by hearing the stories of pain and victimization.”
“This is an incredibly courageous act for these young women. They are often entrenched in society, particularly in the Downtown Eastside where there is a realy bias about coming forward and dealing with these issues,” adds Desmarais.
Investigators are still looking into other files and say more charges could be coming. However, they won’t say if one of those files involves a girl who died of an overdose in Tremblay’s Richmond home last year.
Richmond RCMP say they’re making progress in their investigation into the overdose deaths of two girls last year. Tremblay was questioned in that case but was never charged.
He’s expected in court next month.
