Women win lawsuit against B.C. man acquitted of their sex assaults

VANCOUVER — 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.

Five women filed a civil lawsuit against Henry alleging he sexually assaulted them in their Vancouver homes in the early 1980s.

The plaintiffs are identified only by initials in the ruling, with descriptions of their sexual assaults in their ground-floor or basement suites between May 1981 and June 1982.

Henry represented himself at his criminal trial in 1983, and he was given an indefinite sentence, but he was released and later awarded $8 million in his own civil lawsuit against the City of Vancouver and the provincial and federal governments.

Henry had been declared a dangerous offender after his conviction, and had a criminal record beginning in 1962 for various property crimes and other offences, and was charged with attempted rape in 1977.

Justice Miriam Gropper’s ruling released Wednesday says the court in Henry’s wrongful conviction lawsuit found Crown prosecutors had “seriously infringed” on his right to a fair trial, demonstrating a “shocking disregard” for his Charter rights.

Gropper’s ruling says evidence that wasn’t disclosed to Henry “would have likely resulted in his acquittal at his 1983 criminal trial, and the avoidance of sentencing as a dangerous offender.”

Some of that evidence “included the large volume of material statements made by the various complainants, including the five plaintiffs,” Gropper’s ruling says.

Gropper, however, found Henry liable in the civil lawsuit, saying in her ruling “it is more likely than not that he was their attacker and performed the sexual assaults … on a balance of probabilities.”

Civil cases and criminal cases have “different standards of proof,” the ruling says, and acquittals in crimes that weren’t proven beyond a reasonable doubt do not prevent alleged victims from filing lawsuits.

“An acquittal is not a bar to a civil suit,” the ruling says. “This action for damages addresses Mr. Henry’s liability for the assaults on the plaintiffs, assessed on the civil standard of proof: whether, on a balance of probabilities, the plaintiffs have proved that he was the person who raped each of them.”

She awarded each of the plaintiffs $375,000 in damages, but declined to add $1 million each in punitive damages they sought, with Gropper ruling that a punitive damages award was “not appropriate in this case.”

The women had argued that Henry’s sentence was “cut short” and that the $8 million won in his lawsuit was “wrongfully gained,” but the judge disagreed.

“He should not have been convicted and should not have spent any time in jail,” Gropper ruled. “He was entitled to the damages that he received.”

Gropper’s ruling says each of the women were “proud of their independence,” living alone in their suites, and “their hopes and dreams were shattered when a stranger entered their apartments in the middle of the night,” the ruling says.

Gropper’s ruling says she doesn’t disagree with the findings of the court that acquitted Henry in 2010, and didn’t find “them to be in error.”

“Although I have found Mr. Henry to be liable for his sexual assaults of the plaintiffs, he was acquitted of the criminal charges after he served 27 years in federal custody,” the ruling says. “He has not gone unpunished.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 5, 2025.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press