The next time Cynthia Grandjambe walks into a Yellowknife courthouse, she won’t be called "the victim," anymore.
After pushing to legally lift a publication ban on her identity at a sentencing hearing Thursday for the man who raped and confined her, Grandjambe has reclaimed her name.
Brendan Burke/NNSL photo.
In doing so, she hopes to be a voice for other women who’ve endured abuse and sexual violence – women who may be too scared or too embarrassed to come forward and press charges.
She said she wants to help victims – past, present and future.
“I want them to know that I’m available at any time. I will go to any lengths to help them. I’ll go to victim services with them. I’ll go to the hospital with them and get rape kits,” said Grandjambe.
“I will be there to talk; they just need someone who will understand. I will understand,” she added.
“I want to give encouragement. I know it’s been a long and hard process but it’s worth it. He’s been found guilty.”
In June 2017, Grandjambe was walking in downtown Yellowknife when she encountered Peter Charlie Tsetta. Tsetta provided her with alcohol before inviting her back to his home in Ndilo. The two had known each other for years. Before getting into a taxi, Tsetta told her “don’t worry, you’ll be safe.”
Grandjambe testified at trial that she woke up at Tsetta's home as he was raping her in his bedroom. He pinned her down as she struggled to free herself. When she punched him, he punched her back. When she begged for him to let her go – reminding him of their friendship in a desperate attempt to be freed – he laughed at her.
“All I could do was cry. I couldn’t sleep because of the nightmares,” said Grandjambe, reading from a handwritten victim impact statement between sobs in court. “My world was ripped apart and has never been the been the same."
At an emotionally-charged hearing in August, NWT Supreme Court Justice Louise Charbonneau found Grandjambe’s attacker guilty of sexually assaulting and unlawfully confining Grandjambe after trial.
Tsetta was found guilty at the same trial of sexually assaulting another woman in a strikingly similar attack – just one month earlier in May 2017.
The 50-year-old man offered the victim, who is now deceased, a ride back in a taxi to his residence in Ndilo after the two consumed alcohol downtown. The pair had been in a previous relationship. He received a three-year sentence for breaking her arm in 2013.
In a statement the deceased woman later gave to police, the woman said she awoke to Tsetta raping her.
Charbonneau found Tsetta guilty of sexually assaulting the woman but acquitted him of unlawfully confining her.
Both attacks happened when Tsetta was on bail for another sexual assault charge, which has since been stayed by the Crown.
After being charged with two more sexual assault offences not long after his release on bail, prominent women’s groups in the city voiced concern, asking why the violent offender was released in the first place.
Part of the reason Grandjambe filed charges and testified in court, she said, was so that she could be the voice for the deceased victim.
Prosecutor Annie Piche, who called the rape of Grandjambe brutal and “truly horrific,” said it fit a pattern: Tsetta attacking vulnerable women.
It was a prolonged attack.
“He raped her over, and over and over again,” said Piche.
Piche, underlining the callousness of both rapes, called for a 10-year sentence for the pair of attacks.
Tsetta’s lawyer, Evan McIntyre, who cited the poverty and abuse his client endured as a child, asked the court to consider a total sentence of five years behind bars.
Piche is seeking a 10-year firearms ban, a mandatory DNA order and for Tsetta to be registered as a sex offender for life.
Outside the Yellowknife courthouse Grandjambe clutched her late father's rosary. It's a symbol of hope, she said.
When he was alive, he told her: stop drinking, pursue an education.
After he died, Grandjambe put the bottle down. She's gone back to school.
"(Tsetta) hasn't stopped my life."
Tsetta will be back in court on Nov. 18 for a sentencing decision.