Ex-Afghan hostage's assault trial wraps, verdict due in December
Ottawa: The trial of a Canadian man once held hostage with his American wife in Afghanistan and accused of assaulting her following their release came to a close on Thursday, with the judge reserving his decision until December.
Joshua Boyle, 36, was arrested and charged with assault, sexual assault and forcible confinement at the end of 2017 just two months after he and his wife Caitlan Coleman returned to Canada after their five-year hostage ordeal.
He has pleaded not guilty.
In closing arguments, the defense said Boyle is unconventional and unlikeable but truthful, while the prosecution called his testimony fictitious and self-serving.
"He's meticulous, and therefore argumentative. He can be frustrating to the point of being infuriating. He's not easy to like," Defense lawyer Lawrence Greenspon said.
"But he is a person who tells the truth."
Greenspon noted that there was "no eyewitness or physical evidence to corroborate any of 19 charges" against Boyle.
And he suggested that Coleman concocted the assault allegations in order to get sole custody of their children.
On the witness stand, Boyle denied striking his wife or sexually assaulting her, saying they had "playful and erotic" consensual sex.
Boyle also rejected her claims that he was controlling and abusive, saying that Coleman was volatile and suffered violent fits.
Prosecutors, however, said he lied to disguise his demeaning behavior and assaults on his wife. "He effectively coercively controlled her" and "forced sex" on his wife, prosecutor Jason Neubauer told the court.
Crown co-counsel Meaghan Cunningham added that Boyle believes that "as a husband he has a right to dominate and subjugate his wife."
"Quiet and obedient, that's what he expected her to be," Cunningham said.
Cunningham pointed to a handwritten list of rules -- which Boyle testified were resolutions that had not been acted upon -- requiring Coleman to lose weight, sleep in the nude, plan interesting sex and ensure that he ejaculated at least twice daily.
Coleman testified that she was spanked with a broomstick for failing to meet the latter demand, but Boyle insisted he reluctantly did so only at her request, for unrelated reasons.
Boyle and Coleman, who married in 2011, were kidnapped by the Taliban during what they initially described as a backpacking trip through Afghanistan in 2012.
They were later transferred to the custody of the Taliban-allied Haqqani network. The couple were freed in October 2017, along with their three young children -- all of whom were born in captivity.
A fourth was born afterward. The court heard Boyle's 911 call on the day Coleman walked out of the couple's Ottawa apartment at the end of December 2017.
He claimed she was mentally unstable, struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, and might harm herself.
But the call triggered a police investigation that led to him being charged.
The judge's verdict will be delivered on December 19.
