Court File and Parties
ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
Between:
HIS MAJESTY THE KING
– and –
MARCIAL MANIGBAS
Defendants
Counsel:
D. Hogan, for the Crown Respondent
G. Dorsz, for the Appellant
HEARD: January 27, 2026
RESTRICTION ON PUBLICATION
By court order made under subsection 486.4(1) of the Criminal Code, information that may identify the person described in this judgment as the complainant may not be published, broadcasted or transmitted in any manner. This judgment complies with this restriction so that it can be published.
REASONS FOR DECISION
Overview:
1On December 2, 2024, a trial judge convicted Mr. Manigbas of one count of sexual assault. At the time of the offence, he was the superintendent of a building that the complainant lived in. The trial judge heard evidence from the complainant and from Mr. Manigbas who represented himself. Amicus also assisted the court. Mr. Manigbas appeals his conviction, arguing that the trial judge a) misapprehended the evidence; b) scrutinized the evidence unevenly and c) relied on bad character evidence. For the reasons that follow, I allow the appeal, set aside the conviction and order a new trial.
Summary of the case:
2In 2022, the complainant TN lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in a building in Toronto. On November 9, 2022, she had returned from a trip and called Mr. Manigbas, her superintendent, to open the storage room for her to store a suitcase and her air conditioning unit. He attended at her unit minutes later and offered to help her. TN declined his help but let him into her apartment and pointed to the air conditioner which was a mobile unit on wheels.
3Once inside the apartment, TN said that he grabbed her body tightly with his left arm on her right shoulder. His right hand touched her genitals over her clothes. TN alleged that Mr. Manigbas’ left hand moved down towards her chest area/breast. TN stated that this lasted for about 1 minute. She told him to stop and he did, while saying that he missed her after she was away for so long. TN later clarified that Mr. Manigbas did not stop when she told him to, and he continued for about a minute before she pushed him away.
4TN stated that Mr. Manigbas then left her apartment saying he needed to take out the garbage but offered to come back to help her. She declined his offer and disassembled the air conditioner herself and moved it and her suitcase to the storage room. TN testified that 5-10 minutes later, Mr. Manigbas returned to her apartment and they had a brief conversation in her doorway. TN said she was shouting at Mr. Manigbas while he was apologizing and saying that he missed her. TN stated that the conversation was interrupted by other tenants who needed to speak with Mr. Manigbas. She called him later to ask him to lock up the storage room, because she had moved the air conditioning unit and the suitcase herself.
5At first TN did not report to the police because in her view she was not “raped”. Once she talked about the legality of what Mr. Manigbas did with a friend at work, she reported to the police and sent a complaint to the property manager of the building.
6Mr. Manigbas represented himself and had amicus to cross-examine TN. He testified that he did not touch TN and that he was there to assist her with her AC unit that he had sold her. Part of the deal for her was that he would provide free assembly and disassembly instead of giving her a discount on the cost of the unit. He stated that she had called him on November 9, 2022 to open the storage locker. He asked her whether she needed help with the AC unit. He believed she generally needed professional help with the unit because it was a bit bigger, she was just a lady, and it required some special tools.
7He testified that when he arrived at her unit he asked where the spare tools he had left for her were and was referring to a square head screwdriver. Mr. Manigbas said she did not have it so he went to his apartment and got the right screwdriver. He returned and disassembled the AC unit for her. He said it took about 6 to 8 minutes and she helped by getting some wood and tying the big holes for the exhaust so they could move it more easily.
8Mr. Manigbas testified that after he disassembled the unit, he left to get a dolly to move it to storage. He said that when he had helped her disassemble the unit in prior years, they required a dolly because of its size. It was at that point that TN called him to say she had moved it already. He agreed that she was moving both the AC unit and a suitcase. He said their conversation was normal and casual. There was no shouting. He also said he did not know that she had been away in Japan. Mr. Manigbas supported his evidence with photos with time stamps from CCTV of the hallway of TN’s unit showing when Mr. Manigbas went in and out. Those photos show that Mr. Manigbas did go to TN’s apartment twice, once with a screwdriver in hand. There was no similar objective evidence from the Crown showing that there was any shouting in hallway as TN had testified.
The Trial Decision
9The trial judge delivered a concise trial decision setting out the evidence that she heard including the objective evidence that Mr. Manigbas tendered. She instructed herself on R. v. W.(D.), [1991] 1 S.C.R. 742 and cautioned herself on myths and stereotypes of both sexual assault complainants and perpetrators. Ultimately the trial judge accepted TN as a credible and reliable witness who was unshaken on the core allegations. The trial judge rejected Mr. Manigbas’ evidence but found that some of his evidence supported TN’s characterization of the interaction with him. At paragraph 40 of her decision (reported at 2024 ONCJ 614) she wrote:
Some of Mr. Manigbas’ evidence supports TN’s evidence and perception that he did not take her seriously, did not listen to her, and insisted on helping her with her AC. For instance, Mr. Manigbas testified:
he “assumed” if TN called him to put the AC in the storage room, then she must need his help.
he “assumed” TN needed help, because “she is a lady” and she would not have the knowledge, or the tools required to do the job, even though he testified she had seen him do the job several times before and had helped him do it before.
that though she might be able to do to the job, she would make a “mess, or break something”.
though “tools” were required to do the job, he went to her apartment without any tools, he thought she had tools and asked her for them.
when he attended her apartment, he walked in because he “knew” she needed his help.
TN required his help and the large dolly to move the AC to the storage room but testified he was not surprised when she called him to say she had done it all by herself, 6 minutes after he had left her apartment to get the dolly to do what he testified she could not do.
10The trial judge explained the reason for rejecting Mr. Manigbas’ evidence at paragraph 43:
Mr. Manigbas was facile in his insistence that TN was helpless and needed him. He was dismissive of her ability and focused on his “professional” experience. His reason for providing TN with a “free” disassembly service did not coincide with the reasons he provided other tenants with his service. He was insulting about TN’s appearance compared to a celebrity. I reject his evidence, and his submission that TN is unreliable because she made a timing error.
11The trial judge did not explicitly discuss the inconsistencies in TN’s evidence that the objective evidence raised but for two noted by s. 486 counsel about her account of the timing of events and that she testified that she slapped him in the face only in cross-examination and not in direct examination. She implicitly considered to inconsistencies between the objective evidence and TN’s evidence when she listed the nature of that objective evidence and then concluded that TN was unshaken on her core allegations.
12The trial judge chalked up the sequencing issue to a peripheral timing discrepancy and ultimately concluded that she accepted TN’s evidence that Mr. Manigbas touched her genital area and grabbed her breast and rejected Mr. Manigbas’ denial.
The Grounds of Appeal
13Mr. Manigbas appeals on three bases:
a. That the trial judge misapprehended the evidence;
b. That the trial judge unevenly scrutinized the evidence of the appellant vis-à-vis that of the complainant and improperly rejected his evidence; and
c. That the trial judge relied on Mr. Manigbas’ misogyny to convict him.
Legal Principles
14On a summary conviction appeal, the standard of review is one of deference. The question is whether, based on the evidence, the decision of the trial judge could have been reasonably reached. An appeal should only be allowed where the decision is not supported by the evidence, is clearly wrong in law, is clearly unreasonable, or there is a miscarriage of justice.1
15On credibility and on factual matters, a reviewing court must give due deference to the trial judge who is in the more advantageous position to assess credibility and make findings of fact, having heard and seen the evidence.2
Mr. Manigbas’ negative views of TN and misogyny influenced the trial judge’s assessment of his credibility
16I agree with the third ground of appeal. On plain reading of paragraph 43 of the trial judge’s reasons, the trial judge rejected Mr. Manigbas’ evidence because of his less than complimentary views about TN’s appearance and abilities as a “lady”. Implicit in this paragraph is impermissible moral reasoning that Mr. Manigbas was not credible in his denial of the sexual assault because of his negative views and lack of respect for TN, or that he is the type of misogynist man who would sexually assault her. It is an error of law to wholly or significantly rely on an accused person’s bad character or apply stereotypical reasoning to assess their credibility. After considering the trial judge’s reasons as a whole, I cannot find any legitimate reason for the trial judge to comment on the evidence referred to in paragraph 43. It was not relevant to whether Mr. Manigbas sexually assaulted TN.
17Even if Mr. Manigbas came across as a misogynist, that does not mean that he must be a sexual assaulter who is not to be believed. Paragraph 43 suggests that the trial judge may have improperly made that connection despite how diligent she was in ensuring that she did not consider other bad character evidence that Mr. Manigbas attempted to tender as a self-represented litigant.
18The narrow lens through which the trial judge viewed Mr. Manigbas’ evidence is further revealed in paragraph 40 of the decision where she concluded that him “assuming” and “knowing” that TN needed help with her AC even though she called for a different reason supported TN’s view that he did not take her seriously and did not listen to her. The trial judge did not consider his evidence against uncontroverted evidence that Mr. Manigbas had helped TN with her AC before, that it was a larger unit, that he had disassembled it before and that she needed his help in the past to move it with his larger dolly. In other words, there was a less sinister reasonable explanation for why Mr. Manigbas assumed that TN needed help even if she did not ask for it. It was open to the trial judge to discard that latter explanation but her reasons do not reflect that she engaged in that analytical process.
19While the trial judge also used paragraph 40 to show why she found TN’s description of how Mr. Manigbas found his way into TN’s apartment credible, it coupled with paragraph 43 raises the very concern set out by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Handy, that:
Bad character is not an offence known to the law. Discreditable disposition or character evidence, at large, creates nothing but “moral prejudice” and the Crown is not entitled to ease its burden by stigmatizing the accused as a bad person.3
20Here, the Crown did not tender bad character evidence. Rather, Mr. Manigbas testified in a manner that painted him in negative light. However, the spirit of the prohibition, to prevent moral prejudice and stigmatization of the accused, is equally applicable. I agree with Mr. Manigbas that the trial judge’s distaste for his attitudes towards women generally and TN specifically coloured her credibility analysis of him. With the greatest of respect to trial judge, paragraph 43 read in the context of the whole decision renders the verdict unsafe and it would be a miscarriage of justice to allow the conviction to stand.
21As I have found an error in law on the third ground of appeal, I need not address the first two grounds.
Conclusion:
22I allow the appeal, quash the conviction, and order a new trial.
P.T. Sugunasiri J.
Released: May 21, 2026
Footnotes
- R. v. Rivera, 2011 ONCA 225, 104 O.R. (3d) 561, at para. 32.
- R. v. Howe, 192 C.C.C. (3d) 480, 65 W.C.B. (2d) 41 (Ont. C.A.) at para. 46; R. v. Cresswell, 2009 ONCA 95, 81 W.C.B. (2d) 572, at para. 14.
- R. v. Handy, 2002 SCC 56, [2002] 2 S.C.R. 908, at para. 72.