Brown gets 8 years for sex abuse of stepdaughter
A man who sexually assaulted his stepdaughter for years, beginning when she was just six years old, was sentenced to an eight-year prison term at the Montreal courthouse on Tuesday.
Kevin Brown, 43, expected to be heading to a penitentiary. He registered little emotion as one special constable grabbed a small bag of his belongings while another placed the large man in handcuffs and directed him toward the inside of a prisoner’s dock.
“I have been waiting to see that for years,” the victim, who is now a young woman, told reporters afterwards. “I couldn’t believe this day would ever come.”
After having been raped hundreds of times between 1997 and 2004, the victim filed complaints that led to eight charges being filed against Brown in 2014. Brown was the victim’s stepfather until he separated from her mother in 2006. Most of the abuse occurred while the victim’s family lived in Pierrefonds.
While the assaults came to an end more than a decade ago, the victim continues to struggle to deal with it. She suffers from generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder and requires medication.
“She is still a person struggling with her past abuses and her reconstruction as a functional, healthy and happy woman is an objective that remains (ongoing),” Quebec Court Judge Daniel Bédard said in delivering a decision that leaned more in favour of prosecutor Philippe Vallières-Roland’s request for a 12-year prison term. Defence lawyer Charles Côté had recommended a sentence of between 40 and 60 months.
Bédard sentenced Brown to a seven-year prison term for having sexually assaulted the victim at least “a few hundred times” between 1997 and 2004. He also sentenced him to an additional year, to be served consecutively, for having threatened the girl “so as to continue the sexual abuses in the future and maintain the child in a state of fear and anxiety.” Other sentences Brown received, for offences including invitation to sexual touching and anal rape, will be served concurrently.
While listing the aggravating factors that contributed to his decision, Bédard noted that Brown’s sexual assaults became much rougher after youth protection services investigated him while the victim was in second grade. She had told a schoolmate about what was happening and the information found its way to youth protection services. During the trial, she testified that she denied everything when someone from youth protection eventually asked her questions because Brown had threatened her.
Bédard said that while he agreed with Vallières-Roland’s point that society is becoming more aware of sexual assault and the lasting damage it causes, he was not convinced that such changes can be translated yet into harsher sentences.
“For the court, increased awareness concerning sexual offences committed on children and their impact on their development, security and integrity, does not necessarily mean that society requests a more punitive approach than one (based on recent Canadian precedents). The court does not have in the case at bar, evidence to that effect,” Bèdard said.
The victim said she was very satisfied with the sentence.
“The judge listened to me and that was very important,” she said while thanking Vallières-Roland, police investigators in the case.
For his part, Vallières-Roland said the sentence was “a step in the right direction. Maybe next time we’ll have the evidence (that society in general expects harsher sentences). The judge had a very good ear. It was a very tough road for the victim.”
Brown has filed an appeal of Bédard’s decision to convict him.