Crown seeks 5 years for suspect in luring case
A South Shore man is facing the possibility of a five-year prison term and might be declared a longterm offender in a case where he admitted to having threatened five teenage girls while trying to extort sex from them through online social networks.
Philippe Truchon, 37, of Longueuil, was arrested this year after several police forces across Quebec received complaints from teens who reported a stranger communicated with them through social networks like Facebook and ended up threatening them. In two of the cases, Truchon chose teenagers who had posted that they were looking for a job. Using the aliases “Phil Lawrie” and “Phil Leroy” he pretended to offer them work. But his offers quickly turned violent as he threatened the minors (the victims were between the ages of 15 and 17) if they refused to have sex with him or to pose nude for him over the internet.
In one case, on March 16, Truchon contacted a 15-year-old girl in Repentigny and made comments about her personal photos. The girl told him she wasn’t interested in him. According to a summary of the investigation that was entered into the court record, Truchon replied that he would be having sex with the girl soon “whether she wanted it or not” and that by the end she would be in so much pain she would wish she were dead. The girl filed a complaint with the police five days later.
On July 19, Truchon pleaded guilty to 12 criminal charges, including five counts of child luring. Since then, prosecutor Roxane Laporte has announced she is seeking to have Truchon declared a long-term offender, which would allow for conditions to be imposed on Truchon for several years after he finishes a prison term.
LONG-TERM OFFENDER STATUS SOUGHT
On Friday, Laporte informed Quebec Court Judge Manon Ouimet that she will be seeking a five-year prison term and will request that Truchon be declared a long-term offender for 10 years, the maximum period allowed for such a designation. To support her argument, she produced an evaluation done recently by a psychiatrist who noted that Truchon’s family is fed up with his crimes and wants nothing to do with him.
“When he leaves the prison milieu it could present problems in the future as he won’t have a precise location where he can live,” the psychiatrist wrote, while recommending the long-term offender designation as a means to monitor his release.
Laporte’s request is also based in part on Truchon’s criminal past. She was also the prosecutor in a different case, in 2011, when Truchon pleaded guilty to four counts of child luring through the internet. In that case, the police had evidence Truchon approached 285 teenage girls through social networks like Facebook. A sexologist described Truchon as “a ticking time bomb” while Laporte argued, in 2011, that he deserved a five-year prison term for his crimes. The judge in that case disagreed and sentenced him instead to a three-year prison term.
Defence lawyer Louis Morena asked that his client be given a chance to read the documents Laporte filed on Friday before he decides whether or not to contest having the long-term offender designation as part of his sentence.
The case will return to court in January.