Verdict expected Thursday in trial of former hostage
Joshua Boyle claims he was falsely accused
OTTAWA • Former Afghanistan hostage Joshua Boyle is expected to learn in an Ottawa courtroom Thursday whether he will remain a free man.
Boyle, 36, spent five years in forced captivity with his wife, Caitlan Coleman, after being kidnapped by Taliban- linked militants near Kabul, Afghanistan in October 2012.
Coleman has told court that Boyle slapped, punched, bit and choked her while in captivity then continued that abuse when they returned home to Ottawa in October 2017.
She has testified that she fled from Boyle in sock feet on a bitterly cold evening in late December 2017 to escape his control.
Boyle, however, has flatly denied Coleman’s lurid allegations while painting himself as a thoughtful, caring husband who did his best to manage his wife’s mental illness and violent fits.
Boyle has pleaded not guilty to 19 charges, including assault, sexual assault with a weapon, forcible confinement, criminal harassment and public mischief.
He has said his unstable wife falsely accused him of the crimes.
Ontario Court Justice Peter Doody is scheduled to deliver his verdict in the case Thursday morning.
In doing so, Doody will have to decide who is telling more of the truth, Coleman or Boyle, since they’ve presented wildly different accounts of the same events.
During final arguments, the judge expressed some exasperation with that task: “How am I supposed to decide what to believe and what not to believe?” Doody asked rhetorically.
Boyle’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, urged the judge to accept Boyle’s testimony as a full defence since the Crown offered no independent eyewitnesses and little physical evidence to corroborate the allegations of domestic abuse.
“Joshua Boyle is many things,” Greenspon told the judge. “He’s extremely intelligent and makes little effort to hide that, so he comes off as arrogant. He’s meticulous, and therefore argumentative. He can be frustrating to the point of being infuriating. He’s not easy to like.
“He’s not conventional by any means, by society’s so- called norms, but he is a person who tells the truth — even if it is to his own disadvantage.”
Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham, however, said Coleman’s portrayal of the marriage was backed by testimony from her mother and sister, and by a set of written rules authored by Boyle.
“It is akin to a smoking gun in this case,” Cunningham argued.
Entered as a trial exhibit, the list of rules required Coleman to take cold showers, exercise, lose weight, address others in the house as “sir and madame,” sleep in the nude, plan interesting sex, and ensure Boyle ejaculated at least 14 times a week.
Coleman told court that Boyle spanked her, sometimes violently, as a form of “chastisement” for failing to abide by the rules.
In his t e s t i m o ny, Boyle said the rules were never- acted- upon suggestions devised as New Year’s resolutions. He told court that the biting and spanking in their relationship was consensual, and part of the couple’s “BDSM lifestyle.”
Doody will deliver his verdict in the trial nine months after it launched under a national spotlight.
The trial heard that Coleman and Boyle married in July 2011 after a long, turbulent courtship. Coleman began divorce proceedings eight months into their marriage, but they reconciled, conceived a child, and travelled together to Central Asia.
They entered Afghanistan when Coleman was five months pregnant, and were kidnapped days later by members of the Haqqani network, an extremist group based in southeast Afghanistan.
Coleman blamed Boyle for their ordeal because of his insistence that they visit Afghanistan; Boyle said they were kidnapped because Coleman’s loud, blasphemous fit in a Kabul guesthouse attracted unwanted attention.
Coleman told court that she was more afraid of Boyle than her captors because of his emotional and physical abuse.
Boyle said his relationship with Coleman fractured for good in captivity when she agreed to his mock execution in return for chocolate. In late 2013, he announced his intention to seek a divorce, Boyle said, but they nonetheless continued to have sex in captivity — and more children.
In his testimony, Boyle described himself as a once aspiring war correspondent; as a masochist who married a woman he knew would bring him “chaos and pain;” and as a stoic who still sleeps on the floor.
Coleman is now living in Pennsylvania with the couple’s four children.