VANCOUVER -- The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing an appeal from a B.C. man whose lawyers say he deserves financial compensation for spending 27 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted for several sexual assaults.

Ivan Henry is asking the court to allow him to sue prosecutors for problems in his 1983 trial, including failing to disclose evidence of the assaults and information that other, similar assaults continued while he was locked up.

“Compensation is a meagre word,” said Henry on the steps of the court in Ottawa. “Money’s not going to bring back my family. Money’s not going to bring back time. So what do you do, write me a cheque for 27 years and give me back time? Of course not.”

Henry was convicted in 1983 on ten counts of rape, attempted rape, and indecent assault. He always maintained his innocence.

Almost three decades later another police investigation re-examined a group of similar sexual assaults. DNA evidence convicted another man, Vancouver plumber Don McRae. And that investigation cast doubt on Henry’s guilt.

In 2010, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned Henry's convictions after citing problems with the police investigation, the trial judge's instructions to the jury and lack of disclosure of evidence.

Ivan Henry filed civil lawsuits against the provincial and federal attorneys general, the City of Vancouver and three members of its police department.

The B.C. Appeal Court has heard that new evidence surfaced during a 2002 police investigation involving another offender who was implicated in 25 cases and lived in the across the street from Henry.

The Crown has argued in lower courts that the claim should not proceed because prosecutors did not act maliciously.

The BC Civil Liberties Association and the David Asper Centre, which are intervening in the case, say malice has no role to play in awarding damages.

The groups say they will argue that such an approach fails to recognize the distinct nature of claims for damages under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"Such claims target the state, as opposed to individual prosecutors, and also fulfil the public functions of highlighting the importance of protecting charter rights and deterring future charter breaches."

Henry was arrested in July 1982 in 100 Mile House, B.C., and spent the next 12 years of his indeterminate sentence in a Saskatchewan prison, away from his family. His wife died in 1990.

In 2009, one of Henry's two daughters said outside the Appeal Court of B.C. that her father's sex convictions and dangerous-offender designation had taken an emotional toll on the family.

Tanya Henry said the family was kicked out of neighbourhoods and moved several times to try and hide their identity.

"We have children who don't know their grandfather," she said.

The case has also been very difficult on the survivors of the sex attacks, who are wary they will have to relive crimes that they thought were long past. The women, who can’t be identified because of a publication ban, asked to intervene at the Supreme Court but were turned down.

With files from CTV Vancouver's Jon Woodward