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Joseph A. Neuberger, Neuberger & Partners LLP, Toronto Criminal Lawyers
That question sits at the centre of R v Roan, 2026 ABCA 260, a decision released by the Alberta Court of Appeal on August 5, 2026. The answer the Court gave — a firm yes — is not new law, but the case is a clear and useful illustration of a principle that still surprises a lot of people: sexual assault in Canada does not require a sexual motive.
01 • WHAT HAPPENED
On the evening of June 15, 2022, a man was sitting in an alleyway behind a drop-in centre in Red Deer, Alberta, going through his belongings. Over the next several minutes, four people surrounded him. What began as a demand for drugs escalated into a violent group robbery, the whole of which was captured on high-quality (though silent) CCTV video that later became the backbone of the trial.
Leon Daniel Roan was one of the four. According to the trial judge’s findings, Roan moved in and out of the scene carrying an imitation knife and, at various points, pieces of lumber. He handed a four-foot 2×4 to another participant, who used it to strike the victim when he resisted. He took the victim’s shoes, wallet, jacket, bank and credit cards, and driver’s licence, and he demanded the victim’s banking PIN. And — critically for the charge that became the focus of the appeal — he told the others to “strip him.”
They did. The victim’s clothing was removed piece by piece, and finally his underwear was cut off with a knife, leaving him naked in a public alley. The video shows him leaving while trying to cover himself with his hands. Roan was arrested shortly afterward with the victim’s licence, bank card, and several knives on him.
He was convicted of robbery, sexual assault, and breaching a release order. He appealed the robbery and sexual assault convictions, but at the hearing his argument focused almost entirely on the sexual assault.
02 • THE CORE LEGAL QUESTION
Roan’s central argument was that this could not be a sexual assault because there was nothing sexual about it. The trial judge had accepted that Roan had no sexual purpose — the stripping was about power, humiliation, and getting at the victim’s possessions, not sexual gratification. So, Roan argued, how can it be sexual assault?
The Court of Appeal’s answer draws on a line of authority going back nearly forty years. The starting point is the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in R v Chase, which defines sexual assault as an assault “committed in circumstances of a sexual nature, such that the sexual integrity of the victim is violated.” The test is objective: viewed in light of all the circumstances, would the sexual or carnal context of the assault be visible to a reasonable observer? Relevant factors include the part of the body involved, the nature of the contact, the setting, and any words, gestures, threats, or force.
What that test deliberately leaves out is the offender’s sexual motive. As the Ontario Court of Appeal put it in R v V(KB), a passage the Court quoted here: sexual assault “does not require sexuality and, indeed, may not even involve sexuality. It is an act of power, aggression and control.” Sexual gratification, “if present, is at best a footnote.”
In other words, the law protects a person’s sexual integrity — their bodily and sexual privacy — and that integrity can be violated by an aggressor who feels no sexual interest whatsoever. The question isn’t “was the accused turned on?” It’s “was the victim’s sexual integrity violated, as a reasonable observer would see it?”
03 • WHY THE STRIPPING QUALIFIED
Applying that framework, the Court had little difficulty concluding that forcibly stripping a person naked in public — clothing torn away, underwear cut off with a knife, genitals and buttocks exposed — violated the victim’s sexual integrity. The Court pointed to comparable cases: an offender convicted for stripping and shaving an incapacitated person, a case where grabbing a child’s genitals as “discipline” was found to be a sexual assault, and a decision involving a teenager left standing naked as a form of punishment.
The Court did add a careful footnote worth noting. The trial judge had relied on a passage from R v GI stating there is “an abundance of jurisprudence” that non-consensual removal of clothing to expose sexual body parts can be sexual assault. The Court of Appeal agreed with the legal proposition but pointed out, honestly, that GI asserted this abundance of authority without actually citing any of it. It’s a small moment of judicial candour — endorsing the principle while flagging a soft spot in the reasoning it was borrowed from.
The Court also rejected Roan’s attempt to compare the stripping to a police or border strip search conducted to find contraband. The violent, public, humiliating circumstances here bore little resemblance to a search carried out privately, without touching, in a police station.
04 • “BUT I’D ALREADY LEFT” — THE CAUSATION AND MENS REA ARGUMENTS
Roan’s fallback arguments are where the case gets legally interesting, because they raise the harder question of party liability: how responsible are you for what your co-participants do?
First, Roan argued that he had walked away before the victim was rendered completely naked, so his conduct wasn’t the cause of the sexual assault. The Court rejected this. An intervening act only breaks the chain of causation when it is so independent that it becomes the sole cause of the result — and here there was no independent intervening actor. Roan directed the others to strip the victim, and they immediately obeyed. Notably, one of them was actively cutting off the victim’s underwear while Roan was still present. You don’t escape liability for a result you set in motion just by leaving before the last step.
Second, and more substantively, Roan argued he lacked the mens rea — the guilty knowledge — to be a party to sexual assault. He said that even if he told the others to “strip” the victim, there was no evidence he knew they would strip him completely naked in public.
The problem for Roan was his own testimony. To be a party by abetting or counselling, the Crown doesn’t have to prove Roan desired the outcome; it has to prove he intended to encourage the offence and knew (or was aware of the unjustified risk) that it would be committed. Under cross-examination, Roan supplied exactly that. Asked whether he knew the others were likely to strip the victim, he answered, “Yes sure,” and volunteered that the man who did it “probably would have done it without me saying it anyways because… I’d seen him do it before.” Asked directly whether he knew they would strip the victim after he said it, he replied, “You could suggest that, yeah,” and, “Yeah. I seen them in action before. I know how they work.”
The trial judge dismissed Roan’s later attempt to recast his words as harmless “pointers” rather than a direction, finding that explanation had been “constructed to attempt to avoid liability.” The Court of Appeal saw no reviewable error. Roan’s own admissions established that he knew what “strip” meant and knew it was likely to happen.
05 • THE TAKEAWAYS
A few things make Roan worth reading beyond its own facts:
This is settled law, but Roan is a stark reminder. An act can be sexual assault even where the offender’s goal is humiliation, control, or theft, and even where the trial judge finds no sexual purpose at all. The lens is objective and victim-centred.
Roan never removed the final piece of clothing himself and had left the immediate scene by the end. It didn’t matter. Directing others to commit an offence — and knowing they’re likely to do it — makes you a party to what they do.
Roan’s mens rea argument was defeated almost entirely by his cross-examination admissions. It’s a practical illustration of how much can turn on concessions made in the witness box.
Roan also argued the trial judge’s brief oral reasons were inadequate and inconsistent with the later written ones. The Court reaffirmed that reasons aren’t parsed line-by-line hunting for error; they’re read together, in the context of the whole record — here, a record anchored by clear video evidence.
The appeal was dismissed on all grounds.
READ THE FULL DECISION HERE: R v Roan, 2026 ABCA 260
This post discusses a published decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal. A court-ordered publication ban under section 486.4 of the Criminal Code protects the identity of the complainant, and identifying information has been removed from the judgment accordingly. Nothing here is legal advice; it’s general commentary on a reported case. Anyone with a specific legal question should consult a lawyer.
