A woman testified Feb. 6 in Prince George Provincial Court that the proprietor of Sam’s Family Restaurant in Mackenzie kissed her and touched her vagina at the establishment without her consent.
Before Judge David Simpkin, the woman described herself as a “bubbly and happy” person who would greet a friend with a hug, kiss on the cheek or even give a back massage. She said she never considered it sexual.
Sotirios “Sam” Tourloukis, the restaurant owner, is charged with sexual assault. The woman testified that while Tourloukis was working in the kitchen, he walked up to her and said “hey, give us a kiss.”
“I went to give him a kiss on the cheek, and the man turned, and he kissed my mouth,” she told the court. “I was so shocked by it, and I was like, what are you doing? You're not allowed to do that and he thought it was hilarious.”
She said he proceeded to tell some of the customers, who were his friends, about what happened. “They all had a pretty good laugh about it.”
Despite often expressing her disapproval to Tourloukis, she said he would sometimes smack her rear end or joke about leaving her boyfriend on Vancouver Island.
“‘We will have a Big Fat Greek Wedding, and you can be my wife’ and I kind of sloughed it off as, you know, whatever, a lonely old man, right?”
On another occasion in January 2023, he asked her to scratch his back.
“I went to go scratch his back, right? Because everybody likes a back scratch. And he reached behind him with both of his hands and grabbed my vagina,” she said.
She said he thought it was funny and said “it’s not a big deal.”
“Then he told me a story about how he did that to his friend, one of his guy friends, and grabbed his male friend by the balls, and his male friend thought it was funny,” she testified. “So he didn't really understand why I didn’t.”
She said she went to the bathroom and cried.
Under cross-examination, Tourloukis’s lawyer, Connor Carleton, accused the woman of fabricating the incidents and suggested she was motivated financially.
“That's absolutely rubbish,” she said emphatically. “This all happened. Why would I go through this for the last two years?”
The trial continues Feb. 7.
