B.C.’s high court has rejected the appeal of a man convicted in 2021 of sexual touching of his young sons.
A.B. appealed his Nanaimo Provincial Court conviction on two counts of sexual touching of a person under the age of 16 and one count of inciting a person under the age of 16 to touch a part of his body.
A.B. at trial denied the allegations, Justice John Hunter said in the Nov. 2 decision.
Writing for the unanimous, three-judge panel, Hunter said the allegations against A.B. didn’t come to light until October 2018.
“The appellant had been removed from the home in June 2018 as a result of being criminally charged after taking naked pictures of a little girl J, who was a friend of (one of the sons).”
Both sons — one born in 2009 and the other in 2012 — testified in the case. One was eight years old at the time. The other was six.
Hunter said the issue on appeal was whether the Crown had proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, in light of inconsistencies in the children’s description of the circumstances of the touching.
“The trial judge reviewed the evidence, was satisfied that the sexual touching had occurred, and rejected the appellant’s denial,” Hunter said.
“On the totality of the evidence, there is nothing to suggest that either child had a motive to lie about their father’s actions,” the provincial court trial judge said in the June 11, 2021 conviction decision.
A.B. alleged two errors.
He argued the trial judge improperly shifted the burden of proof to him when she rejected his testimony because he failed to explain why his sons would have fabricated their versions of events.
And, he asserted, the judge erred by failing to provide adequate reasons about what conduct formed the basis of the convictions and how the court reconciled conflicting evidence provided by his children.
“The judge applied a common sense approach to the evidence of the children, recognizing that inconsistencies in detail do not necessarily mean that they have misconceived what happened to them and who did it,” Hunter said.
“In my opinion, the judge did not shift the burden of proof to the appellant, and her reasons adequately explained the basis for concluding that the sexual touching had occurred,” Hunter said.
As such, the appeal was dismissed
Glacier Media has changed the initials of the convicted man to avoid any identification of the children.
