An Eden Valley man will remain in jail until the end of July awaiting his preliminary inquiry on sex assault charges.

Details of the allegations that are keeping the man behind bars cannot be made public to keep the identity of his young accuser private. Nor can the accused man’s name be printed because of a publication ban.

Turner Valley RCMP arrested a 41-year-old man in October on allegations of a sexual relationship with a pre-teen girl. He remained in prison without a bail hearing until two weeks ago when a judge denied him bail. During his time in prison the accused was severely beaten and was in a wheelchair for a period of time.

Last week his lawyer appeared in court with a Crown prosecutor from the special prosecutions unit to set a preliminary hearing date.

Crown prosecutor Janice Darling asked a family-friendly courtroom be used to allow the girl to testify from another room without facing the accused.

The Crown and defense lawyer Joe Nahman also agreed to delay a hearing over a conditional sentence breach following the preliminary hearing.

The accused man had been sentenced to a conditional sentence order (CSO), but the new allegations have him in breach of that order.

Darling said they would prefer the girl only have to testify once, rather than at both the CSO hearing as well as the preliminary inquiry.

A two-day preliminary inquiry will be held in Calgary court July 29 and 30. If a trial is ordered following the preliminary inquiry it will be heard by a Court of Queen’s Bench judge.

A review of the conditional sentence order will be held Aug. 9 in Calgary.

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