Vancouver's 'rip-off' rapist served 27 years, now pleads poverty owing 5 victims almost $2M after winning $8M in taxpayer cash for 'wrongful conviction'
Hope resident Ivan Henry's case illustrates difference between criminal court's 'guilt beyond reasonable doubt' and civil court's liability 'on a balance of probabilities'
“He did it,” said a jury in 1983.
“He didn’t do it,” said the highest court in B.C. in 2010, agreed to by the BC Supreme Court in 2016.
“Actually, he did it,” the BC Supreme Court said this year.
So which is it?
Stories of wrongful convictions are rare and legendary in Canadian history, but Ivan Henry’s is one of the most unusual. The so-called “ripoff rapist” – if it was him – was convicted by a jury in 1983 and spent 27 years behind bars until the B.C. Court of Appeal decided in 2010 that he was wrongfully convicted.
The case illustrates the difference between the bar prosecutors have to meet in criminal court of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and liability in civil court which is based on a balance of probabilities.
Two B.C. Supreme Court decisions in front of different justices came to very different conclusions awarding him $8 million from three levels of government in 2017 and ordering him to pay $2 million to five of his victims earlier this year.
The ‘rip-off rapist’
Those who spent time behind bars after flawed criminal justice proceedings are usually and understandably held up as victims, martyrs often, tragic examples of a system with cracks and failures that can lead to catastrophic consequences.
There was Steven Truscott in 1959, Donald Marshall Jr. in 1971, David Milgaard and Guy Paul Morin in 1992, Clayton Boucher in 2015.
Wrongful convictions happen for a lot of reasons: anachronistic DNA testing technology, police tunnel vision, shoddy witness testimony. But sometimes a wrongful conviction is because of legal technicalities or malfeasance. Just because a person is not guilty, however, not only does it mean they aren’t necessarily totally innocent, they might have still committed the crime.
Ivan William Mervin Henry, who now lives quietly in Hope, B.C., was a construction worker in the late 1970s with a significant criminal record, including for attempted sexual assault in 1977. After a series of sexual assaults in a similar pattern between November 1980 and June 1982, police investigators first focused on another man known to police, Donald James McRae who had been arrested twice for late-night predatory behaviour in Vancouver neighbourhoods.
The assaults that took place in basement or ground-floor apartments involved an attacker who would often break in and claim he had been “ripped off” by someone who lived there before the rapes, hence the nickname.
One problem for investigators of this crime based on witness identification is that Henry and McRae looked alike. The Crown’s case was based solely on eyewitness evidence with seven of the eight victims identifying Henry as the perpetrator at trial. Much of the identification before trial was questionable, from an in-person lineup where Henry was held in a chokehold to a photo lineup where he was pictured in front of a jail cell.
According to Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions, the trial judge wrongly instructed the jury that Henry’s resistance during the restraint in the lineup could be taken as evidence of a guilty conscience. There was no forensic evidence and there was no reliable pre-court identification.
“In sum, ‘[t]his was decidedly not a strong case,” according to the site.
On March 15, 1983, the jury convicted Henry, who represented himself, on all 10 charges. He was deemed a dangerous offender on Nov. 23, 1983 and sentenced to an indefinite period of incarceration.
For almost two decades he filed habeas corpus application to be released from unlawful imprisonment, appealed his conviction and dangerous offender status, and appealed to the federal Minister of Justice to review his case.
None of it worked.
In 2005, McRae pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault that occurred in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood. A provincial prosecutor noticed similarities to Henry’s conviction, and his appeal was reopened. He was granted bail.
On Oct. 27, 2010, the B.C. Court of Appeal quashed Henry's conviction and acquitted him of all charges. In that decision, the court noted several problems with the Vancouver Police Department investigation and the prosecution’s lack of disclosure to Henry for his defence, among other problems that amounted to violations of Charter rights.
Civil court’s lower bar
Henry sued the Province of B.C., the City of Vancouver, and the Attorney General of Canada in 2011 after the wrongful conviction decision. He settled with the city and the federal government for $5 million, and carried on to a civil trial that found in his favour for a further $3 million from the Province.
“No one besides Henry has been prosecuted for the 'rip-off rapist' offences, which remain unsolved,” according to a short write-up on his case on the wrongful conviction registry's website.
Henry must have celebrated his acquittal and his millions of dollars until January 2024 when five victims, now in their 60s and 70s filed a lawsuit against Henry for being raped at knifepoint.
“They allege that they were all assaulted by the same man, Ivan Henry. This action claims damages against him,” according to the decision from Justice Miriam Gropper on Jan. 29, 2025.
Henry still claimed he didn’t do it.
“Mr. Henry does not dispute that all five plaintiffs were sexually assaulted,” that from Justice Gropper's written decision. “He denies that he assaulted them. His position is that the plaintiffs’ evidence identifying him as their attacker is inadequate and unreliable and it does not demonstrate, on a balance of probabilities, that he was the person who attacked these plaintiffs. He seeks dismissal of this action.”
There it is: “balance of probabilities.” Henry's criminal conviction came about in 1983 when a jury found him guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Despite that, apparently there was indeed a reasonable doubt jurors didn’t have presented to them and it took 27 years to recognize it.
The plaintiffs anonymized with initials and locations of the sexual assaults on the file are:
• A.B. who was sexually assaulted in her ground-floor apartment at 223 East 16th Ave. in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver on May 5, 1981;
• C.D. who was sexually assaulted in her ground-floor apartment at 2267 West 7th Ave. in the Kitsilano neighbourhood of Vancouver on February 22, 1982;
• E.F. who was sexually assaulted in her ground-floor apartment at 2142 Carolina St. in Mount Pleasant on March 10, 1982;
• G.H. who was sexually assaulted in her ground-floor apartment at 8750 Osler St. in the Marpole neighbourhood of Vancouver on March 19, 1982; and
• I.J. who was sexually assaulted in her basement suite at 433 West 17th Ave. in Mount Pleasant on June 8, 1982.
So, did he do it?
To most people who didn’t go to law school, what follows will likely seem illogical. But somehow it makes legal sense.
Firstly, Justice Gropper said she didn't disagree with the findings of the court in 2010 that acquitted Henry after 27 years. She didn’t find them to be in error.
The conviction was wrongful. The late-sentence acquittal was justified. However: “I find that Mr. Henry is liable for sexually assaulting each of the plaintiffs,” Justice Gropper concluded.
"Henry is not a credible witness. I do not accept his denials over the plaintiffs' evidence.”
She also found that while Henry was indeed the “rip-off” rapist on a balance of probabilities but was acquitted thanks to criminal reasonable doubt, at least he was punished.
"Although I have found Mr. Henry to be liable for his sexual assaults of the plaintiffs, he was acquitted of the criminal charges after he served 27 years in federal custody," the ruling says.
Justice Gropper awarded general and aggravated damages of $375,000 each for a total of $1.875 million plus the victims’ legal costs for the trial.
To summarize: A jury found Ivan Henry guilty in 1983. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Hinkson decided in 2016 that Henry deserved $8 million for what the B.C. Court of Appeal determined in 2010 was a wrongful conviction. In 2025, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Miriam Gropper concluded that on the legal balance of probabilities, Henry did rape five women and needs to pay them each $375,000.
‘Innocent man’ narrative insults victims
Google “Ivan Henry” and look at the first links you see. The top three results, at least as of my search on July 6, 2025, appear in peach-coloured boxes next to a photo of Henry smiling come from the “Knowledge Graph, Google’s collection of information about people, places, and things,” according to Google.
The top result is a CBC link that has a date posted of June 13, 2024 with a headline “Ivan Henry’s Supreme Court of Canada Appeal.” Click the link and you come to a CBC video story with that headline and only a few words underneath: “A man whose conviction was overturned after he spent almost 27 years in prison is seeking compensation.”
The video, which says it is from 11 years ago, is a newscast starting with B.C. broadcaster Andrew Chang and his opening: “A man who spent 27 years in prison for sexual assaults he did not commit is fighting for financial compensation.” (Emphasis mine.)
The second Google result is from the aforementioned Canadian Registry of Wrongfully Convicted (CRWC) with the words “Henry was wrongfully convicted of a series of sexual assaults due to a combinations of sincere but mistaken eyewitness evidence….”
The third is from BC Studies, a supposedly peer-reviewed journal edited by UBC historian Paige Raibmon, with the headline: “Innocence on Trial: The Framing of Ivan Henry,” a remarkable write-up rife with academic tunnel vision from March 8, 2016 that claims Henry was framed.
Scroll down your Google search and up next is the Wikipedia page for Henry, then another link to the CRWC page. Only after all the above does one come to a CBC link of a Canadian Press story posted on Feb. 5, 2025 with the headline: “Women win lawsuit against Ivan Henry, the B.C. man who was acquitted of sexually assaulting them.”
The point being, through all of this the victims are ignored completely while a convicted rapist is treated with almost hero status even after a 2025 decision found that he is the rapist.
The Vancouver lawyers for the five women released a statement on their behalf after the decision criticizing the public narrative that Ivan Henry was an “innocent man,” as this helped to ensure the victims were “voiceless.”
The statement from Irina Kordic and Kevin Gourlay said Justice Gropper’s decision confirmed “what these five remarkably brave women have said for over four decades: Ivan Henry was the man who sexually assaulted each of them.”
The women hope the legal system will stop focusing only on the rights of offenders in cases of wrongful convictions all while victims languish with no support during some of the “worst moments of one's life.”
“Victims should not be left to fight for themselves.”
Show me the money
As for Henry who was found liable for raping five women, paying less than a quarter of it to his victims shouldn’t be too onerous.
How much can a newly wealthy person spend in 14 years? Henry blew it all.
“B.C. man who got $8M for wrongful conviction says he’ll be penniless if made to pay sex assault damages” is the Canadian Press headline on the CBC’s news site from a little over a month ago, May 31, 2025.
"The value of the (January 2025 ) judgment exceeds my net worth," Henry said in an affidavit filed in the B.C. Court of Appeal (BCCA) in May. "I would be homeless and have no means to support myself."
As for the rest, he claimed it went to living and legal expenses fighting the civil suit. The BCCA, however, found $1.8 million unaccounted for in Henry’s claims with “large sums” moving in and out of his account for five years until 2023.
His affidavit also contradicted something he said to the plaintiffs’ lawyer in an examination on May 5, 2025, that he gave away $3 million by 2017. He said in 2024 that he had $2 million in cash and a house, but lost millions defending the civil suit.
Justice Nitya Niyer suggested his inconsistencies “raise real questions about whether Mr. Henry has access to more funds than he claims.”
Ivan Henry is 78 years old and lives alone in a house in Hope with an assessed value of $650,000 and he owns two vehicles worth about $40,000.
Henry’s appeal of the civil decision will likely be heard in fall 2025 with a decision not likely until spring 2026.
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Paul J. Henderson
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