OTTAWA -- Former Afghanistan hostage Joshua Boyle, accused of assaulting his now-estranged spouse Caitlan Coleman, denied Wednesday that he was sexually violent with her.
Boyle testified in Ontario court that while he and Coleman regularly engaged in bondage-style sex, it was consensual and playful.
Boyle, 36, has pleaded not guilty to offences against Coleman, including assault, sexual assault and unlawful confinement, as well as a charge of misleading Ottawa police in the hours before he was arrested.
The offences are alleged to have taken place in late 2017, after the couple returned to Canada following five years as prisoners of Taliban-linked extremists who seized them during a backpacking trip to Asia.
Boyle made a frantic, late-night 911 call on Dec. 30, 2017, to say his wife had run screaming from their Ottawa apartment, threatening to kill herself.
The call triggered a police investigation that led to Boyle's arrest hours later for allegedly assaulting Coleman on several occasions.
During the trial, which began in March and has paused several times, Coleman has testified her husband spanked, punched and slapped her during their overseas captivity, and that his violent ways resumed shortly after they were freed by Pakistani forces.
Coleman said that on one occasion in Ottawa, an angry Boyle ordered her to strip naked, then used rope to bind her hands behind her back and her feet together on a bed with her face down.
Taking the witness box in his defence Wednesday, Boyle said while he didn't recall that specific incident, the couple did sometimes have completely consensual bondage-type encounters.
"We didn't engage in angry sex or anything like that," he said. "If she indicated she didn't want to have sex, we didn't have sex. It was strictly playful between us.
"Our safe word was 'no.' If you said 'no' or you shook your head vigorously, it was over."
Boyle portrayed Coleman as an unstable person prone to fits and violence. She had a "tempestuous personality" and was mercurial at the best of times, he told the court.
Boyle said that during their difficult courtship Coleman would slap and hit him and even claw at his eyes.
Coleman once came at him with a knife because he brought the wrong kind of mayonnaise home from the grocery store, he claimed.
