Senior gets 11 years for sexually abusing two girls

A Carberry-area man was sentenced on Thursday to 11 years in prison for sexually abusing two sisters who viewed him as a grandfather.

“This offender was not a stranger. He wasn’t even just a teacher… He was someone they loved and trusted,” Crown attorney Rich Lonstrup said in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench.

The 70-year-old man was found guilty of two counts of sexual interference after standing trial in March, where the victims, who were ages five and nine at the time of the offences, testified. The Sun cannot name the accused because of a publication ban on information that could identify the victims.

Between the summers of 2021 and 2022, the man performed oral sex on the nine-year-old victim and had the five-year-old victim perform oral sex on him, Lonstrup said. He said there was also mention of his genitalia being either near or touching the younger sibling’s genitalia.

Lonstrup said there are many aggravating factors, including the girls’ ages and the fact that there were two victims.

“Both of them are very young and very vulnerable,” Lonstrup said. “They were less able to defend themselves, less able to physically, even verbally, assert themselves.”

He said it was a major aggravating factor that the man was in a position of trust.

That breach of trust will have long-term impacts on the young victims, which will affect their ability to “develop long-term, loving, caring, bonding relationships” with adults and sometimes their own children, Lonstrup said.

“Everyone was comfortable for them to simply spend weekends there and have him over for family events and birthdays. It is a reasonable potential … that these girls will spend most, if not all, of their lives trying to square how someone that close and that beloved to them could abuse them like this,” he said.

“This accused wasn’t just in a position of trust, but he had something special, which was a sole caregiver position, and they went over to his house. He’s the only adult there. His opportunity to offend happens because their mother trusted him to be alone with them.”

Lonstrup said the impact of the offending has had a ripple effect on the family, and the victims’ mother is at “ground zero of it all.”

The mother read her victim impact statement in court through sobs, raising her voice increasingly as she read. She said her children were forced to grow up too early and their lives have been heavily impacted.

“What you have done has had a devastating impact on not only my children, but our whole family. I always told my children that monsters were not real, and as I stand here today, I eat my own words, because they do exist, but in human form,” she said.

Lonstrup said the girls’ mother is sick with guilt and shame, despite having had no reason to distrust the man.

He said the man told the younger victim to keep the sexual acts a secret, and it only came to light when she innocently said to her mom, “I have a secret.”

Lonstrup asked the court to impose a sentence of six years for each of the charges, for a total of 12 years.

Defence lawyer Anthony Dawson said the man maintained his innocence and pointed out that no matter what sentence the court imposes, the man will be almost 80 or older by the time it’s completed.

He said the man was “rather afraid of going to jail,” which makes sense considering his health, referring to the fact that he is in remission after being diagnosed with cancer twice.

The man had a light, dated and unrelated record and was assessed at a very low risk to reoffend, which Dawson said is rare and something that the court should consider when deciding the appropriate sentence.

Dawson said a close friend and neighbour described him as a “generous person who’s very helpful.”

“In many ways, he seems like the last kind of person you would expect to come before the court on serious charges, let alone ones that track these types of sentences,” he said.

Dawson cited cases with similar or more severe aggravating factors with offenders in “higher positions of trust” who received shorter sentences than what the Crown suggested.

“He’s an older man with rather poor health that a jail sentence will certainly not help,” he said.

Dawson asked the court to impose a sentence of three to four years for crimes against the younger victim and three and a half to four years for crimes against the older victim. Since the man was dealing with two charges at once, Dawson asked the court to decrease the final total sentence.

Justice Elliot Leven called the offences “horrific” and sentenced the man to 11 years in prison. As the judge delivered his sentence, the mother let out a sigh of relief and clapped as he was being escorted out of the courtroom by sheriffs.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com