CORNER BROOK A man who has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the seven-year-old daughter of his ex-girlfriend tried to show he has accepted responsibility for his offences by calling a witness to defend his character in provincial court this week.
The 55-year-old man from Stephenville, who cannot be named since that could possibly lead to identifying his young victim, and his girlfriend split up shortly after the assault that occurred during a camping trip in mid-August 2010.
It was only the man and the little girl who went on the camping trip. During the three days and two nights they were gone, the man touched the girl’s genital area, performed oral sex on her and took inappropriate photographs of her in a bikini. While Crown attorney Adam Sparkes told the court the girl had said she was nude in some of the photographs, no such photos were among the four entered as exhibits in the case and Sparkes conceded there was no evidence that such photos existed.
The man had threatened to kill the girl’s mother if the victim told anyone what he had done with her. It was not until the relationship between the man and the girl’s mother ended that the girl told her mother about the assaults during the camping trip.
The mother and daughter had filed a complaint in late August and, for the next 10 days, the police searched for the man extensively without any luck. Charges were filed Sept. 3, 2010 and an arrest warrant issued.
The search would go on for months with no indication where the man was.
The man finally called the mother in February 2011, but she had no idea where he had called from. In March 2011, the RCMP received a letter from the man who said he knew the police were looking for him and gave details of the camping trip that only he and the little girl would have known.
When the man called his former girlfriend a second time, the number was traced to a cellphone in the Northwest Territories. He was arrested in June 2011 and has been in custody ever since.
On July 26, he pleaded guilty to four offences, including sexual interference, uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm, sexual exploitation by inviting a young person to touch the body of person for sexual purposes and failure to comply with a probation order.
He was back in court this week for Judge Kymil Howe to hear the facts of the case and submissions on sentencing from the Crown and defence.
Before the submissions, defence counsel Sandi MacKinnon called a witness to testify about the man’s character. The Roman Catholic priest had hired the man when he showed up in the Northwest Territories in November 2010.
The priest told the court that he could tell something was bothering the man, but did not know what it was. He eventually figured out that he was wanted by the police since he was not willing to renew his driver’s licence — something which prevented the man from landing better jobs in the area.
When the man bought a cellphone and began making calls back to Newfoundland, the priest knew the calls could be traced and thought maybe the man was ready to be found by the police. In the days leading up to his arrest, the priest said the man conducted his business with “a sense of urgency” and tried to finish up all of the jobs he had been doing.
Police were coming
It seemed to him that the man knew the police would soon come and get him.
The priest testified that he has worked with inmates at numerous penal institutions across Canada and can tell when someone is remorseful for what they have done and when they are not. He said it may have taken some time, but this man has chosen to own up to what he did to his victim and face the consequences.
“He came back to Newfoundland to face what he has to face and, for that, I commend him,” said the priest.
During cross-examination, Sparkes asked the priest if he had been deliberately harboring a suspected sex offender. The priest said that he never knew the nature of the crimes the man had been accused of until after he was arrested and charged.
Sparkes asked Howe to imprison the man for between 18 and 22 months, followed by a lengthy period of probation, though he did not specify how long that probation should be.
MacKinnon acknowledged a period of incarceration was warranted, but asked for a lower range of between 15 to 18 months, followed by two years of probation.
Howe will make her decision on sentencing on Monday.
