Rev. Brent Hawkes Trial Concludes with Defence Lawyer Calling the Case "Weird"

By Ian Fairclough
Local Xpress
November 24, 2016

https://www.localxpress.ca/local-news/rev-brent-hawkes-trial-concludes-with-defence-lawyer-calling-the-case-weird-472045

Rev, Brent Hawkes, who is charged with indecent assault and gross indecency, will have to wait until the new year before hearing the verdict in his case. (IAN FAIRCLOUGH / Local Xpress / File)

Weird. That's how defence lawyer Clayton Ruby described the trial of Rev. Brent Hawkes during closing arguments in Kentville provincial court Wednesday.

“This is a weird case, and the evidence is weird,” he said, adding the weirdness will make it a proceeding that will be remembered years from now.

“There's a theme through my submissions, to watch for the weird case,” he said. “Because the weirdness tells you things that ordinary cases don't tell you.”

Ruby conceded that he didn't have the evidence to show the three Crown witnesses were lying, but “we do have an abundance of evidence that their testimony is unreliable.”

Hawkes is facing charges of indecent assault and gross indecency as a result of an incident in the 1970s in which he is accused of forcing a student from West Kings District High School to have oral sex with him following a night of drinking.

Much of Ruby's arguments dealt with the memories of the three witnesses — the complainant and two other men — who said they were together at Hawkes's trailer the night of the party. The witnesses were students at West Kings District High School at the time and Hawkes was a teacher there.

The complainant had testified during the trial that after much alcohol had been consumed the then teens played strip caps at the suggestion of Hawkes, who later led the complainant down a hallway to a bedroom where Hawkes forced the complainant to have oral sex.

The two other witnesses said they remember seeing the complainant going down the hall, as well as drinking at the trailer and playing games. But both said they couldn't remember some details of what happened.

One of the witnesses said he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Hawkes performing oral sex on the complainant in the living room.

None could remember how or when they left the trailer.

Hawkes has denied the allegations, and said he didn't provide the teens with alcohol, although it was present in the trailer.

The complainant contacted police two years ago, after writing down and sharing his story with a sexual assault victims support group that he joined the year before. He said he joined the group after hearing someone from a sexual assault support centre say that a third of sex crimes go unreported.

“The burden of proof in this case, as in all criminal cases is proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Ruby told the court. “In a case like this, it's much, much harder for Crown counsel to meet that standard, because it's a 40-year-old case, with witnesses who were extremely drunk at the time.”

He said the evidence has witnesses “speaking in terms that are, frankly, surreal, and they themselves can't explain.”

The defence lawyer suggested the complainant was so drunk “that probably most of the night is a blank, and the two days afterward. ... It was never encoded at all (in his memory.). What he did was fill in the blanks.”

Ruby said some of the discrepancies in the testimony were “bizarre and surreal.”

Even the evidence about the complainant going down the hallway was contradictory, he said, noting the complainant described being guided down and drunkenly bumping into walls, while another witness said the complainant was behind Hawkes as they went down the hall.

The complainant said he saw his friends gesturing like a wave or a thumbs up, but the friends said they didn't do that, Ruby said, indicating it was another discrepancy in the testimony given by the Crown witnesses.

“The Crown needs you ... to pick and choose some of the memories, and ignore the contradictions and the ones that are bizarre and surreal. That is not your job,” Ruby told Judge Alan Tufts. “(The Crown) has to satisfy you, make you feel comfortable with the truth of what is being said about oral sex in the main bedroom, which no one witnesses but (the complainant saw).”

Ruby argued that the complainant was filling in blanks of his memory with false information and “imagination inflation.”

“My submission to you is to approach the evidence with a very critical mind regarding 40-year-old memories. They have frailties just based on time alone, but add to it this: such a very long delay is fertile ground for imagination inflation.”

He also suggested there was collusion among the witnesses.

Ruby said that Hawkes was a “straightforward and honest witness.”

“There's no reason to disbelieve him.”

Crown attorney Bob Morrison told the court that all three witnesses testified in a similar way and that they remembered pieces of what happened, “based on what they observed, based on what was significant to them, based on their vantage point.”

He said the complainant and Crown witnesses all testified that they hadn't discussed the situation with each other since that night, and except for a six-month period when the complainant and one of the others shared an apartment after school, they didn't have much if any contact with each other in the four decades since graduation.

The complainant “gave a vivid, detailed account of what occurred, recalling specifics of what was said, how he was touched, even the smell of the accused,” Morrison said. “He described his memories of that evening as a patchwork of clear memories, not enough to fill in the complete picture or give a complete narrative.”

While it was suggested to all three witnesses that they had reconstructed their memories, the first said he did not, while the second and the complainant admitted that some of the extrinsic details they talked about were assumptions they made about how they thought certain aspects of the night transpired, the prosecutor said.

“These were extrinsic details, not the core, or significant events of what occurred.”

A defence expert witness on memory testified that when someone experiences something significant, “we tend to remember them, ... 'we remember things worth remembering' was his phrase,” Morrison said.

The Crown witnesses remembered what was significant, unusual and unique to them, and many minor details were forgotten or filled in, he added.

The expert also testified about the types of things that can cause memories to be retrieved, and how that can make them unreliable at times but the complainant has indicated he has remembered the event since it happened, Morrison said.

Tufts will deliver his verdict Jan. 18.