A B.C. Supreme Court judge convicted a 38-year-old licensed school teacher of sexually assaulting a woman he lived with in 2018 in Prince George.
In a Nov. 20 verdict, Justice Simon Coval found Brendan Tomas Boylan committed the offence beyond a reasonable doubt.
During the trial, which began in April 2023 and sat intermittently until Sept. 27 of this year, the court heard that while having consensual sex with Boylan, the victim said it hurt and she wanted it to stop, thus withdrawing her consent. Boylan claimed that he stopped as soon as she asked, but the victim said he did not. Instead, the victim testified, Boylan held her down on the bed and forcibly continued, causing her injury.
The parties met in 2017 and Boylan began living with the woman after a month. They lived together until the incident.
The victim, identified as Ms. X in Coval’s ruling, said the assault occurred on a Saturday morning in May or early June 2018. However, the Crown accepted the defence statement that the incident happened on the morning of May 26, 2018.
Boylan alleged that the victim fabricated the assault and he took steps in 2020 to recover money he said he lent her during the relationship. The victim then reported the incident to police.
“She testified that, having not reported it before because of shame and not wanting to think about what had happened to her, once the accused sued her she felt she had no option but to deal with it,” Coval wrote.
Boylan was charged Nov. 19, 2020.
Three witnesses testified and another gave evidence via an agreed statement of facts. One of the witnesses, whose identity is covered by a publication ban, testified finding the victim “in almost a catatonic state.”
Coval found aspects of Boylan’s evidence implausible, not credible and untruthful. He said he found the victim clear, credible and persuasive.
“The credibility of her evidence that she suffered the alleged traumatic assault was circumstantially corroborated by the evidence of [the three witnesses] regarding her extreme emotional upset, fear of the accused and being at home and her changing of the locks, all within a few days of the events in question,” Coval wrote. “In my view, none of that conduct was consistent with the accused’s version of what occurred between them.”
The B.C. government’s online registry of teachers says Boylan has signed an undertaking not to practise, “pending resolution of a matter before the commissioner or a hearing panel under Part 6 of the Teachers Act.”
