Convicted sex offender gets year in jail for break-in

Caretaker was previously imprisoned for assault on female student in 2007

Convicted sex offender Philip Allan Skulnec was sentenced to a year behind bars Friday for breaking into the unit of a woman in the apartment building where he was caretaker.

Justice David Gates accepted a joint submission from defence lawyer Rebecca Snukal and Crown prosecutor PamMcCluskey for the punishment.

Gates also ordered Skulnec to serve two years of probation as part of the sentencing proposal put forth by Snukal and McCluskey.

As part of the probation, Skulnec must take sex offender counselling.

The Calgary man admitted to breaking into the apartment of a woman he’d befriended last Feb. 26, following a night of drinking with her and her friends.

According to a statement of agreed facts, the woman had gone home to sleep when she awoke to find Skulnec in her bedroom.

“The complainant awoke to find the accused crouched down beside her bed,” the statement said. “She yelled out.” Skulnec left immediately upon the woman screaming.

“The accused had no proper purpose for entering the complainant’s home and being in her bedroom.”

When she befriended Skulnec, the woman made it clear to him she was not interested in a romantic or sexual relationship with him, court was told.

Skulnec was sentenced to the equivalent of nine years in prison for a 2007 attack on a female European student who was living in Edmonton.

A machete-wielding Skulnec, who said he was emboldened by booze and cocaine, chased his 27-year-old victim up a stairwell before forcing her into her own suite, where he spent several hours sexually assaulting the bound woman.

The judge in his 2012 sentencing decision called the acts both demeaning and “horrific,” adding Skulnec’s guilty plea was an acknowledgment that he “acted as a monster.”

Because of credit for time already served, Skulnec has 235 days left on his current sentence.