Man avoids prison after repeatedly filming himself having sex with unconscious wife

Photo: Castanet Staff

A Kamloops man who repeatedly videotaped himself having sex with his unconscious and unconsenting wife over a period of years will avoid prison — but a judge warned him he could be jailed if he violates conditions of his house arrest.

The 59-year-old man, who cannot be identified under a court-ordered publication ban put in place to protect the identity of his victim, was sentenced on Tuesday in B.C. Supreme Court to two years of house arrest.

Court heard the man and the victim separated in 2014, ending a 12-year relationship.

Years later, in 2018, a former co-worker of the man found video on a hard drive in their workplace showing the man having sex with an unconscious woman. The co-worker contacted police, who launched an investigation.

Court heard Mounties found 37 sexual incidents filmed and saved on the hard drive, each of them depicting the man engaged in non-consensual sex acts with the woman. In a victim-impact statement read in court, the woman said she had no idea about the recordings and did not consent to anything depicted.

“These heinous acts of rape, which I neither consented to nor have any recollection of, have left me shattered and in need of long-term counselling to help me deal with a range of emotions,” she said.

The woman closed her statement, delivered during an Aug. 19 hearing, by imploring the court to sentence the man to the “harshest sentence” possible — which would have been a jail sentence of five years.

But that did not happen. Instead, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Joel Groves went along with a joint submission calling for a two-year conditional sentence order with a number of conditions.

The man will spend one year on house arrest, then six months on a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. After that, he will be able to apply to have his curfew relaxed for the final six months of his sentence.

In handing down his sentence, Groves said case law makes it very hard for judges to go against joint submissions.

“One should be loathe to vary from that joint submission because, as a judge, I do not know how this case would have proceeded if it had gone to trial,” he said.

“So I rely on experienced counsel, when they present a joint submission, to know they have done their best.”

Groves warned the man he could be jailed if he violates the conditions of his house arrest, which also includes a term barring him from having any contact with the victim.

“You have one chance, sir — that’s it,” he said.