Anger after B.C. man acquitted in sex assault case because he was high on drugs
WARNING: This story may be triggering to some readers. Discretion is advised.
Battered Women's Support Services (BWSS) is expressing deep concern over the recent acquittal of a man who attacked a woman in 2019 while under the influence of magic mushrooms and cannabis.
Leon-Jamal Barrett was charged with break and enter to commit the indictable offence of sexual assault, sexual assault, resisting or wilfully obstructing a peace officer in the execution of their duties, and public nudity, all concerning a bizarre series of events that occurred in the early morning hours of March 9, 2019, in Surrey.
The public nudity charge was stayed before trial.
In a ruling posted online in March, Judge Hinkson said this was an unusual case.
'There is no doubt as to whether or not Mr. Barrett did what he is accused of,' Hinkson wrote.
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However, Barrett was acquitted on all charges as the judge ruled he was too high on mushrooms to know what he was doing when he violently attacked a stranger.
Barrett described a complex hallucination from the mushrooms in which he concluded that humanity was corrupt and destined to be punished.
'He was fixated on a belief that all life had started from one cell splitting into two and that he was a descendant of half of that cell,' Hinkson wrote.
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'He believed God was commanding him to find the other half, a woman chosen by God, and that God would sacrifice both of them during an act of sexual congress in order to save humanity.'
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When a woman did not come to his house, Barrett left his home and that's when he saw the victim getting out of her car and go around the back of her house.
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The victim testified that Barrett pushed her down and assaulted her.
She was able to get into her house and lock the door, eventually attracting the attention of neighbours who called the police.
Barrett was found not criminally responsible with Hinkson accepting the defence of automatism, or actions performed without conscious thought or intention.
'This ruling is devastating. It tells survivors that their pain is real, but their pursuit of justice may be futile,' Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director of BWSS said in a statement.
'This woman fought for her life — biting, screaming, resisting — and yet the legal system sided with the man who harmed her, because he chose to get high. We cannot allow intoxication to become a shield from responsibility when it comes to sexual violence.'
In 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Section 33.1 of the Criminal Code, which had previously barred the use of extreme intoxication as a defence in cases involving sexual assault.
Parliament later amended that decision, but it did not apply in Barrett's case.
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'Survivors are retraumatized by a system that finds ways to explain away violence rather than confront it,' said Johanne Lamoureux, Manager of Community-Based Response at BWSS.
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'Our front-line teams hear every day how deeply unsafe and re-traumatizing the criminal system is for those who come forward. When the courts uphold the 'moral innocence' of perpetrators, it reinforces why so many survivors never report in the first place.'
BWSS is now calling for an immediate federal review of how amended Section 33.1 is being applied, and whether further reforms are needed to uphold survivor rights and public education that makes clear that intoxication is not an excuse for violence.
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