Jail time for groping woman on bus

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This article was published 17/09/2012 (5030 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A mentally ill man who groped a woman as she slept on a Greyhound bus has been jailed.

His victim was a complete stranger, a fellow passenger who happened to be seated nearby.

“It’s not just a bizarre matter, it’s a frightening matter,” Crown attorney Rich Lonstrup told Brandon court.

Marc Jerome Louis, 61, pleaded guilty to sexual assault and breach of a bail order by failing to live in Toronto.

Lonstrup said that on July 7, a Greyhound bus driver stopped the bus in Virden and kicked Louis off after a woman passenger complained of being touched by a man.

She gave a description that matched Louis — a black man with one leg who was on crutches — and Louis admitted to the touching when confronted by the driver.

He was kicked off the bus in Virden and, around 4:30 a.m., the driver contacted RCMP who found Louis on a Virden street.

He told police he was on his way to Vancouver, even though he was supposed to be living in Toronto.

The victim was later contacted by police and told them that she’d fallen asleep on the bus with her legs extended into the aisle.

She awoke to find her boyfriend yelling at Louis. She felt Louis’s hands pull away from her thighs and her pants had been undone.

Louis had also touched her crotch, although all of the touching had been done over the woman’s clothing.

Lonstrup said that Louis had also put his hands down the woman’s pants, but hadn’t touched any sensitive areas at that point.

Louis, who has been in custody since the incident, has a record that includes previous convictions for sexual assault and sexual interference.

He’s pending on five counts of sexual assault out of Toronto for similar allegations of touching women, all women he didn’t know. The allegations date between November 2011 and April 2012.

He’s also pending on a common assault charge.

At the time of the bus incident, he’d been out on bail with an order that he live at Seaton House in Toronto.

Lonstrup described it as a halfway house of sorts for people with mental health issues.

Online, Seaton House is described as a homeless shelter for men that includes the mentally ill among its clients.

Louis is schizophrenic and, when he’s not on medication, he hallucinates that he hears voices.

He’s made four suicide attempts, including at least one in which he jumped into the path of oncoming traffic. That attempt resulted in the loss of one of his legs.

Lonstrup asked that Louis be sentenced to one year in jail so he’d receive intense treatment while housed in the sex offender unit at Headingley jail. That should be followed by two years probation with further sex offender counselling, Lonstrup also recommended.

Defence lawyer Philip Sieklicki asked for a sentence of time served of 69 days for Louis, or 90 days minus time served.

While he said he recognized the need to protect the public, Judge John Combs questioned whether a lengthy jail term would do that. He said the provincial jail system lacks the supports and assistance Louis needs.

Combs said it’s the sort of case that would be suited to a mental health court, if Brandon had one.

Such a court — which diverts mentally ill offenders from the regular court system in favour of monitoring and treatment — was recently set up in Winnipeg.

Brandon, however, doesn’t have one yet.

In the absence of such a court here, Combs said that he recognized the need to denounce Louis’ crime and sentenced him to a total of 120 days in jail minus 69 days time served.

That will be followed by two years probation with orders to get a mental health assessment and take treatment as directed.

Louis’ name will appear on the national sex offender registry for 20 years.

Combs noted that he expects that Louis will be returned to Toronto at some point to face his remaining charges.

Combs heard this case on Thursday and it marked the second time within a week that a judge had called for a mental health court in Brandon.

Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta did so on Sept. 10 while sentencing a man with mental health problems who’d threatened a gas station clerk with a knife.

Back in April, even before the Winnipeg court began, Combs suggested that a mental health court would be a benefit here.

» ihitchen@brandonsun.com