Couple headed to prison for sex acts with boys, dogs

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This article was published 29/04/2022 (1494 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Manitoba couple has been sentenced to four years in prison after admitting they recorded sex acts with two teenage boys, and in separate incidents, animals.

“We are truly embarrassed of our actions that resulted in us being here today,” 61-year-old Donna Woodward told Queen’s Bench Justice Elliot Levin at a sentencing hearing Friday. “We truly hope we have not created any future trauma and issues for the victims.”

Woodward and her husband, Charles Woodward, 63, pleaded guilty to two counts of making child pornography and one count of bestiality.

Police arrested the couple in November 2018 after one of the then-15-year-old boys disclosed an incident to his father.

An RCMP report submitted to court says the couple provided the boys a ride to their home and plied them with alcohol. A video recording, which was later seized by police, shows the Woodwards and the boys topless, and the boys fondling Donna Woodward’s breasts. In another part of the video, Donna Woodward is seen kissing one of the boy’s chest. Both Woodwards appear naked in the video.

The videos did not depict any acts of intercourse and it was not alleged the Woodwards had shared the images with anyone, court was told.

One of the boys was so intoxicated he had almost no memory of what had happened, Crown attorney Jay Funke told the judge.

“If it hadn’t have been for those events being memorialized in both video and still images, we wouldn’t have a full extent of what happened here.”

Videos seized by police included images of two other teenage boys, but no charges were laid involving them.

Mike Cook, the lawyer for Donna Woodward, and Michael Dyck, the lawyer for Charles Woodward, both said their clients were confused about issues of consent.

“Ignorance of the law is not a defence,” Cook said. “My client now understands very clearly what the law is.”

The police report says other seized videos show the couple engaged in “sexual activities with different dogs on different occasions” between 2008 and 2018.

“We identified, at minimum, seven different animals, all of which were dogs, that both accused were engaged with,” Funke said.

Funke urged the judge to prohibit the couple from possessing any animals for life, arguing anything less would put any pets they kept at risk.

“This is the type of offence that is extremely difficult to detect,” Funke said. “Animals have no capacity to report offending behaviour.”

Levin ordered that the couple be prohibited from owning dogs for five years, saying it was unnecessary to impose a blanket pet ban that would include animals not subject to abuse, such as fish.

The four-year sentence was jointly recommended by the Crown and the couple’s lawyers. Levin said he was satisfied both offenders posed a low risk to the community when they are released from custody, noting their clean prior records and absence of breaches while on bail.

“I will go out on a limb and predict I will never have to see either accused again in a courtroom,” Levin said.

Donna Woodward said she and her husband accepted whatever punishment the court considered reasonable.

“We guarantee that we will never reoffend in any capacity,” she said.

The couple’s sentence included an order that their names be included on the national sex-offender registry for life and that they be prohibited from using social media for 10 years.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca