News and Features
Vancouver's Ivan Henry Finally Released
By Joan McEwen published Oct 1, 2012
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For 26 years Ivan Henry insisted he’d been wrongfully convicted. Two years ago, the courts finally agreed and set him free. Like dozens before him, he still
wonders: Is that enough?
In May 12, 1982, Ivan Henry, 35 years old, living with his wife and two young daughters at Main and East 17th, was arrested without warrant and forced into a hastily constructed lineup composed mainly of plainclothes officers.
Struggling for air as three policemen held his head in a chokehold, he was identified by three of 11 women—by his voice. The police released him, but Henry was immediately placed under surveillance. According to the VPD, that didn’t stop him from raping two more women—one the next day, the second three weeks later. After hypnotizing one of the victims, then showing her a photo array that included a picture of Henry with bars in the background and a police elbow in front, the police got the identification they needed. Resurrecting identifications from earlier victims, they re-arrested Henry, charging him with 17 counts of sexual assault involving 15 women.
Feeling paranoid that the legal aid lawyers who had represented him did not have his back—not a single one of them took the police-conspiracy elements of this account seriously—he opted to represent himself at trial. As the victims cried and quivered under his overly aggressive cross-examination—Henry as good as accused them of making the whole thing up—jurors shook their heads in disgust. So convinced was trial judge John Bouck of his guilt, and so poor at legal self-representation was Henry, a former construction worker who was selling jeans across the province out his hatchback, that Bouck kept conflating the words “attacker” and “accused” in his instructions to the jury. They came back after just hours: guilty of 10 counts of sexual assault on eight women.
This was the time of the Clifford Olson serial murders, and the public mood was fearful and unforgiving. Like Olson, Henry was designated a dangerous sex offender and given 11 concurrent life sentences. The likelihood he’d receive parole before he died? Slim to zero.
