BC man convicted of murder of indigenous woman; The court rejects the ‘rough sex’ defense

Warning: This story contains disturbing details

A B.C. man was convicted and convicted of murder after failing to convince a judge that the woman he killed and dismembered consented to the strangulation that caused her death.

The victim, Carmelita Abraham, 33, a member of the Takla First Nation, was last seen alive in late December 2021. The RCMP later announced that the case had evolved from a missing persons investigation to a murder investigation.

Joseph Bernhart Simpson, 51, was charged on January 15, 2022, with murder and indignity to human remains. Mounties described the circumstances of the case as “a tragic incident that occurred between Joseph Simpson and Carmelita Abraham, who knew each other. “

The judge’s decision in the case was published on October 1. According to the BC Public Prosecution Service, Simpson was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole the next day for 14 and a half years for manslaughter and four years for murder. interference with human remains.

Simpson pleaded guilty to the second charge, which stemmed from police finding parts of Abraham’s dismembered body in garbage bags in his basement.

He also admitted to killing Abraham, but mounted a defense that, if successful, could have acquitted him or convicted him of a lesser charge.

“There is no issue that Mr. Simpson caused Ms. Abraham’s death by manual strangulation during an incident at his home,” Judge Terence A. Schultes wrote in his decision.

“However, he claims that this occurred without any accompanying intention on his part, during an act of consensual sexual intercourse with her.”

The trial lasted fourteen days in Quesnel and the judge’s ruling includes extensive and disturbing descriptions of the evidence the court heard about the injuries Abraham suffered, how her body was found and what Simpson told the mother of his children about his crimes – including that he “felt nothing” when he killed Abraham and had “no remorse.”

When he convicted Simpson of murder, it was evidence from a medical expert testifying about the fatal strangulation that the judge found particularly compelling.

“It is the evidence of the amount of time that pressure must have been applied to Ms. Abraham’s neck to cause her death that satisfies me beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Simpson intended to kill her,” Schultes wrote.

“In the context of a person having their hands in that position and applying enough pressure to cut off their victim’s oxygen supply, several minutes is a very long time to be confronted with the obvious consequences of these actions and the obvious consequences if these continue. .”

Additional injuries to Abraham’s body, including bruising to her face, chest and feet and swelling, were, according to the judge, “highly suggestive of a serious assault that preceded or accompanied the asphyxiation, which again is completely inconsistent with a carefully controlled consensual sexual act.”

The ‘crude sexual defense’

Isabel Grant, a professor at UBC’s Allard School of Law, is one of several legal scholars who has studied the defense Simpson used — what she calls the “crude sex defense” — and its use in Canadian courts.

The defense broadly allows a suspect to argue that if injury or death occurred during a consensual sexual act, no criminal offense occurred.

In the approximately 100 cases Grant and her colleagues looked at between 1988 and 2021, every suspect using this defense was male and 94 of the 97 complainants were female.

“It’s completely gendered,” she told CTV News.

“This is just the latest version of ‘she asked for it,’” she continues, referring to the pernicious trope of blaming female victims — especially in cases of sexual assault and domestic violence — for the violence they experience.

Of the cases investigated, 75 were sexual assault cases, and more than half of the cases involved the more serious allegations of assault occasioning bodily harm or aggravated assault. The most common relationship between the complainant and the defendant was an intimate partner relationship.

Grant notes that the law regarding rough sex defenses has recently changed due to ongoing appeals and decisions in the Cindy Gladue case.

Gladue, a Cree-Métis mother of three, bled to death in 2011 from an 11-centimetre wound to her vagina in the bathtub of an Edmonton hotel room. The case sparked national outrage after the man admitted causing the injuries that led to his death. she was acquitted of murder after a trial in which Gladue was repeatedly referred to as a “native” and a “prostitute” and her remains – specifically her preserved vaginal tissue – were introduced into evidence.

In cases like Glaude and Abraham, Grant notes, a deceased victim cannot provide evidence of his or her own.

“There will never be anything that contradicts his claim that ‘she wanted me to do this,’” Grant says.

The judge rejected Simpson’s evidence of consent for a number of reasons, describing it as “convenient” and “highly strategic.” But it was an omission she found particularly damning.

“Nowhere did he testify to her words or gestures that indicated her consent to these actions to him,” Schultes wrote.

“There can be no implied consent to sexual activity, no broad prior consent to such activities of undefined scope, and no determination of a propensity to consent based on prior consents. A complainant’s consent must be directed to each act and must be provided at the time it occurs,” the judge said, summarizing the law.

Instances where consent is used as a defense, according to Grant, have the effect of confusing a perpetrator’s acts of violence with the victim’s exercise of sexual autonomy.

“We have yet to see a case in court in which a surviving complainant testified that she consented to the activity that was the subject of the charge. There are no cases,” she said.

“Women don’t say, ‘I agreed to this.’ They say, ‘It hurt me, it hurt me.’ They say, ‘I never agreed to this at all.'”

But in cases like Abraham’s, the court, the victim’s loved ones and the public are left with the suspect’s testimony and the disturbing evidence that led to the conviction.

“He literally spoke of her as an object, even when describing their sexual activity,” Grant says.

“I just can’t bear it, the thought of having family members in the courtroom listening to stuff like that.”