Man brutally tortured by his wife and her boyfriend in Toronto apartment

Tortured mercilessly by his own wife and her new boyfriend, victim was too broken to escape

Toronto Star

Jayme Poisson, Liam Casey Fri Jan 13 2012

His body cut with razor blades and beaten with hammers and broom handles until they broke. Lighter fluid poured over his skin, and then set on fire. Cartilage ripped from his ears with a pair of pliers. Pins pierced through his lips, sealing his mouth. Bleeding wounds cauterized with hot knives or sewn up with a needle and thread.

Those responsible for the horrific abuse were the man’s own wife and her new boyfriend. The location was a cramped one-bedroom basement apartment in the city’s west end.

John Michael Siscoe, 40, and the victim’s wife, 30, quietly pleaded guilty earlier this week in the Superior Court of Justice to a slew of charges, including endangering a life and sexual assault causing bodily harm, from Oct. 31, 2009 until police rescued the man on Jan. 19, 2010.

Responding to a call from concerned area residents, they found the victim huddled in the dark bedroom closet, naked, shivering, malnourished and with grotesque wounds.

He had five fractured ribs, two collapsed lungs, facial fractures, abrasions and burns all over his body. Pictures taken after he was found show what resembles a man’s face, but black, blue and bloated to three times its normal size. His eyes were swollen shut as pus and plasma oozed from his wounds.

On Thursday afternoon, as the agreed-upon “horrible litany of facts” was read out, only a handful of people were in the courtroom at 361 University Ave.

They heard a story of a victim whose spirit was so broken that he never tried to escape and who, even when rescued, continued to protect his torturers.

The court ordered a ban on publication of anything that would tend to identify the victim, who is still legally married to the woman in the dock. At the time of the abuse all three were living together in Toronto and she was pregnant with Siscoe’s child.

The story started back in 2005, in a small town southeast of Vancouver. The victim and his wife married in a back yard civil ceremony. Pictures from a Facebook account reveal a smiling couple surrounded by family. They lived off disability insurance — she handled the bills while he cooked.

Starting in 2008, the relationship soured. She was unfaithful and took to the Internet to chat with other men. In December of that year, at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, the victim met Siscoe, a short, solid man with jet black hair, prior convictions and a history of drug and alcohol abuse. They became acquaintances and he invited Siscoe to spend New Year’s Eve with him and his wife.

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