B.C. court orders man to pay 5 women who sued him for sex assaults

A man who spent 27 years in prison before he was found wrongfully convicted has been ordered by a British Columbia Supreme Court judge to pay $375,000 each to five women who sued him for sexual assault.

Ivan Henry was convicted of 10 counts of sexual assault in 1983, but he was released after the B.C. Court of Appeal determined he was wrongfully convicted and acquitted him in 2010.

In the ruling posted online on Wednesday, the judge stated that “Individually, each plaintiff has met her burden: to establish that Mr. Henry is the man who attacked her, on the balance of probabilities.

“They each have proven that it is more likely than not that Mr. Henry committed these sexual assaults.”

In 2016, Henry was granted $8 million in compensation in a B.C. Supreme Court ruling.

However, in 2017, the BC Court of Appeal upheld a Supreme Court ruling from the previous year that stated the province does not have to pay the full award.

Henry sued the province after he was acquitted in 2010 of 10 sexual assault convictions. The federal government and the City of Vancouver settled with Henry in 2015 for undisclosed amounts.

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In December 2015, Crown lawyer John Hunter said that Henry sealed his own fate when he represented himself in court in 1982 and that awarding him millions for that decision would be sending the wrong message.

Hunter said Henry should bear some responsibility for his conviction after repeatedly refusing legal counsel.

“The message that should go out is that, ‘Yes, we’ll all try to make sure the trial is fair. But you need a lawyer. You need a lawyer if you’re charged with a serious criminal offence,’” Hunter said at the time.

During his original trial, Henry fired three of his lawyers and refused two more.

More to come…

-With files from The Canadian Press