WARNING: This article contains details about a criminal sexual assault trial and may be disturbing to some readers. If you or someone you know has been impacted by sexual violence, contact Archway Society for Domestic Peace at 250-542-1122. All programs are easily accessible, free of charge and confidential.

After a break of about two and a half months, closing submissions were made in the sexual assault trial of former Vernon chiropractor Murray Kievit, with the central arguments resting on the issue of informed consent, and whether contact with sensitive areas of the body in the course of chiropractic treatment was sexual in nature. 

Kievit, 60, stands accused of two counts of sexual assault against a single complainant which are alleged to have occurred at two separate chiropractic treatment sessions in Vernon in December 2021. The name of the complainant in the case is protected by a publication ban. 

At the time of the alleged offences, Kievit was a chiropractor at White House Wellness Centre, which he founded in 2006. Last summer, amid the sexual assault allegations, he had his registration permanently cancelled by the College of Chiropractors of B.C. He previously told the court that he retired from the profession after his 30-plus year career. 

The trial began in August 2024, at which time the complainant took the stand and alleged that Kievit had touched her breasts without her consent during a treatment session, and then touched her vaginal area without her consent at another session two days later.

Crown prosecutor Catherine Rezansoff told Justice David Ruse at the outset of the trial that the central issue of the case would come down to whether or not the complainant consented to these points of contact at the treatment sessions. 

The court had heard that the complainant did five treatment sessions with Kievit and alleged the sexual assaults took place on the final two sessions. She told the court that Kievit did not tell her what he was going to do before doing it in terms of treatment involving the touching of these areas of her body. 

After a six-month hiatus, , when Kievit took the stand and his lawyer, Michael Klein, had him describe his version of the events. He was then cross-examined by Rezansoff. 

On Friday, April 11, the trial again resumed at the Vernon Law Courts for closing submissions from both lawyers. The hearing began with arguments by the defence. 

Klein told the court that while Kievit agrees he made contact with the complainant's breasts and pelvic area, he denies any of his actions were outside the scope of legitimate chiropractic practice. 

"There is a reasonable doubt here," Klein said, arguing his client's evidence at trial was "cogent, reliable and supported, and ought to be believed," while there were "problems with the complainant's evidence with regard to the nature of the contact."

Both the Crown and the defence agree that the complainant did not verbally articulate that she was uncomfortable with being touched during the treatment. This was part of the Crown's argument in January that consent had not been obtained, in keeping with the principle that silence is not consent, whereas in cross-examination Kievit said he did not believe verbal consent was mandatory in the context of those treatment sessions. 

On Friday Klein said that it was not until cross-examination that the complainant conceded that as soon as Kievit became aware of her discomfort at being touched, he stopped the treatment. The Crown disagreed with this assertion, arguing the complainant conceded this during direct examination without any prompting.

"It's not like he's plowing ahead here and doing something when someone...makes a gesture or some indication that they're not okay with that, for whatever the reason may be," Klein said. 

Much of the defence's argument hinged on whether the contact with the complainant's breasts and vaginal area was sexual in nature, or if it was instead legitimate treatment.

The defence lawyer argued that it was the complainant who "sexualizes the context." He said it was a case of Kievit's and the complainant's perspectives differing. 

He used the example of when Kievit massaged the complainant's buttocks, an incident that hasn't been put forward as sexual assault. 

"If we look at that particular moment in time, there's potential for that to be sexualized in terms of making contact with someone's buttocks. But it's a matter of perspective. She didn't have that perspective at that particular moment in time."

"All of this is clinical, not sexual," Klein said of the treatment. 

As he'd done at previous hearings, Klein asserted that his client was "talking throughout and telling the complainant what he wanted to do." He said when Kievit was treating her pubic symphysis, and any contact he made with her mons pubis was incidental and "not the object of the treatment itself."

Klein then went a step further and argued that the complainant had tried to "embellish or characterize the evidence" to make it seem worse than it actually was. He pointed to statements she made to the police and the College of Chiropractors of B.C. that had "inconsistencies," and claimed they show "an agenda to paint what was going on with a brush of insidiousness."

Rezansoff followed Klein's submissions with the Crown's counter-arguments. 

She began by laying out the bedrock issue of the case: "Was the touching involved in the chiropractic treatment a sexual act, as to make any non-consensual touching a sexual assault?"

She said there are three elements of proof related to sexual assault: touching, the sexual nature of the touching, and the absence of consent. She said the first two are objective while consent is subjective and determined "by reference to the complainant's internal state of mind towards the touching at the time it occurred."

Justice Ruse said Kievit's evidence was that he had explained what he was going to do with his hands before he did it. Rezansoff contended that he never told the complainant which part of her body he would be touching ahead of time and that there may be incidental contact with her vaginal area, and ask if that was okay. 

"Because he's not really articulating where he's going to be touching her and what might actually occur, it's not consent," the Crown argued. 

Rezansoff submitted that with a more invasive treatment, "a reasonable person would take greater care in ascertaining consent" than Kievit did. 

Rezansoff also pointed out that "speculation or testing the waters is not consent." She addressed the defence's argument about the treatment of the complainant's buttocks, and argued this treatment could not be taken as some form of "advanced" consent for the subsequent treatments, adding this raises a concern about the "stereotypical reasoning that just because she's consented in the past means she's more likely to consent now."

The Crown lawyer pointed out Kievit's position of power and superior knowledge of human anatomy, arguing he made "cavalier" assumptions about what the complainant understood was going to happen in the treatment sessions. She said he knew about the existing power imbalance and the need for clear consent from training he confirmed he had received, but "despite all this, Mr. Kievit did not clearly tell (the complainant) he was going to touch these areas. He did not ask for or obtain consent."

Rezansoff said the complainant's evidence was that Kievit had rubbed and pushed on her vagina without telling her that this was going to happen and obtaining consent before doing it, but instead was "just talking as he's doing it."

The Crown disagreed with the defence's argument that there were various inconsistencies in the complainant's testimony with regards to where exactly she was touched in her pubic region. The disagreement appeared to be about whether the "top of the vagina" amounted to the vagina itself. The Crown dismissed this discrepancy as "a matter of semantics." She also rejected the defence's argument that the complainant was embellishing her account of the events, adding there was "no hint of insidiousness."

"There is no such thing as a perfect witness, but (the complainant) was very consistent and very credible, and very clear," she submitted.

Rezansoff said the complainant's evidence can be accepted beyond reasonable doubt, that she did not consent to being touched in these sensitive areas even for medical purposes, and that Kievit was "reckless or wilfully blind to her consent and cannot use the guise of a bona fide medical treatment."

Friday's hearing concluded the evidence portion of the trial. Justice Ruse will make his decision on the case at a later date.