The Prince George teacher convicted late last year of sexually assaulting a woman he lived with in 2018 returned to BC Supreme Court in Prince George on Tuesday, April 15, hoping to stay the charge on constitutional grounds.
Brendan Tomas Boylan, 39, was charged in November 2020 and tried intermittently between April 2023 and September 2024.
At issue was a sexual encounter that began with mutual consent. The victim testified that Boylan did not respect her pleas to stop. Instead, he held her down on the bed and forcibly continued, causing her injury.
Boylan denied the allegations.
Justice Simon Coval found Boylan’s testimony “implausible, not credible and untruthful” and deemed him guilty beyond reasonable doubt on Nov. 20. Sentencing is on hold due to Boylan’s application under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The hearing began with a surprise from Boylan’s lawyer, John Duncan: Boylan had decided to represent himself, court heard. Duncan told Coval that Boylan’s decision was not related to fees. Boylan had asked him to assist on a limited basis, but he was not charging him.
“I see no professional, ethical issues, although you need to know I might become a witness in this matter, so that could be an issue,” Duncan told Coval.
Crown prosecutor John Cliffe said he learned before 5 p.m. the previous day that Boylan had fired Duncan.
Coval asked Boylan if he understood the complexity of his application and whether he wanted a chance to adjourn to seek more advice.
Boylan declined. He proceeded to argue that the time period from the charge to the end of his trial was 46 months and nine days, which far exceeds the 30-month presumptive ceiling for a case in BC Supreme Court.
That 30-month limit was set by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 2016 decision on Barrett Richard Jordan, a BC man accused of drug trafficking in 2008.
Jordan’s lawyers succeeded in convincing the court that their client’s right to timely trial, as guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, had been violated. The Supreme Court ruled that any delay attributable to or waived by the defence does not count towards the time limit.
“There's only one time period where the defence waived delay,” Boylan submitted. “Particularly, the defence waived delay from April 5, 2023 to July 31, 2023, when the trial was adjourned to allow defence file a revised section 276 application (about evidence of a complainant’s sexual activity).”
Boylan called the Crown’s assertion that the case was complex baseless.
“None of the hallmarks of a complex case are present here. There's no co-accused, there's not a large number of witnesses, there was no expert evidence,” Boylan said. “The charges did not cover a long period of time, there is not a large number of charges and pre-trial applications, and there is not a large number of issues in dispute.”
After the November conviction, Boylan was listed in the BC government online registry of teachers as having signed an undertaking not to practice “pending resolution of a matter before the commissioner or a hearing panel under Part 6 of the Teachers Act.”
