John De Ruiter and his wife Leigh Ann, shown in 2014.Facebook
A self-styled Alberta spiritual leader and his wife have pleaded not guilty to a combined 14 charges of sexual assault and have elected to be tried by jury.
John de Ruiter, 63, and his wife, Leigh Ann de Ruiter, 64, entered the pleas in Edmonton this week. Their cases will be back in court on Nov. 10 to set trial dates.
Mr. de Ruiter is facing eight charges of sexual assault against eight separate women who were among his large community of followers. Ms. de Ruiter faces six charges. The allegations date back to 2012.
The couple also face unusual new bail conditions barring them from possessing, viewing or accessing any “intimate and explicit images, relating to the complainants or their intimate current or former partners, or copies thereof” except with their lawyers.
They also face a new condition not to “share, transfer or otherwise disseminate” any of the Crown’s evidence against them. Mr. de Ruiter remains barred from any unsupervised contact with women other than immediate family, his current wife, and Katrina von Sass, his former wife who also lives with him and Ms. de Ruiter.
For decades, Mr. de Ruiter has led a community of hundreds of highly dedicated followers from around the world as “the living embodiment of truth.” The group is sometimes called the College of Integrated Philosophy or Oasis group.
Questions about Mr. de Ruiter’s sexual relationships with followers were the focus of a Globe investigation in 2017. Mr. de Ruiter was arrested by Edmonton Police Service officers early this year, and charged with four counts of sexual assault.
At the time, police said Mr. de Ruiter had “informed certain female group members that he was directed by a spirit to engage in sexual activity with them, and that engaging in sexual activity with him will provide them an opportunity to achieve a state of higher being or spiritual enlightenment.”
Police also urged anyone else who believed they may have been victimized by Mr. de Ruiter to come forward, and the additional charges against Mr. de Ruiter and his wife have been laid in the months since.
Another Globe investigation in March documented that Mr. de Ruiter’s community has been relocating to an isolated area northwest of Edmonton.
Speaking to the media outside court after Mr. de Ruiter’s first court appearance, defence lawyer Dino Bottos said the women were initially consenting to sexual activity with Mr. de Ruiter, but “have now claimed afterward, years afterward, that their consent was really nullified and not valid, because they were somehow placed under his spell, or that he was somehow deceiving them into believing that they should sleep with him in order to find a higher state of consciousness.”
He said the allegations would be “hotly contested.”
Jana G. Pruden