Former CFL player convicted of Vancouver sexual assault

Keith Fraser, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, January 30, 2007

VANCOUVER - Former B.C. Lions linebacker Keith Franklin has been convicted of sexually assaulting a woman at knifepoint in her Vancouver high-rise.

After two days of deliberation, a B.C. Supreme Court jury on Monday also found the 36-year-old former captain of the Lions' defence guilty of unlawful confinement, uttering threats and robbery. He was acquitted of two counts of break and enter. A sentencing hearing is set for Feb. 5.

The 29-year-old victim testified that she was returning home from work when Franklin followed her to her apartment from the elevator and then entered her suite. Franklin, a six-foot-two, 230-pound defender, ordered the five-foot-two, 100-pound woman to go into her bedroom.

The victim said that during an hour-long ordeal, Franklin took off his clothes and ordered her to do the same, and then used a kitchen knife to force her to perform oral sex on him, threatening to kill her if she refused.

Franklin, a heavy drug user, got high while smoking crack cocaine throughout the incident, she said.

She finally managed to escape by running naked out the door, screaming as she ran down the hall knocking on doors before going down a stairwell to the safety of a suite several floors below.

The jury also heard of a second incident in which another female victim living in the suite next to Franklin's was said to have been robbed of $20 shortly after the sex assault.

Franklin claimed he was invited into the first apartment and that the woman agreed to smoke crack cocaine with him. He denied the sex assault.

The case before B.C. Supreme Court Justice Harry Slade began in an unusual way, as prospective jurors were asked whether they would be able to be impartial with an accused black man. Franklin played for the Lions in 1999 and 2000.