Ringleader in sex-shame attack gets four years
Offences had `horrendous impact' on victim, violated her dignity: Judge
The ringleader of a vicious 2015 kidnapping and sex-shame attack that was broadcast on Facebook has been sentenced to four years in prison.
Eunice (Chou Chou) Ilunga, 46, expressed no remorse throughout the trial and said nothing after Superior Court Justice Robert Smith sentenced her Tuesday.
Ilunga and her crew — Safia Mahinja and Sandrine Tomba-Kalema — kidnapped a young Ottawa woman from her Donald Street apartment, only to terrorize her in a cruel revenge plot for having sex with the ringleader's boyfriend.
The successful case by assistant Crown attorneys Louise Tansey and James Cavanagh was anchored in Facebook videos of the attacks that left the young woman suicidal and fearing for her life. She tried to jump off her 16th-floor balcony, but her attackers restrained her.
In the first video, the terrified woman is seen confined in her bathroom and berated for having sex with Ilunga's boyfriend. The woman is crying. The other videos, which were also posted online, show her undressed on a bed as Ilunga applies hair-removal cream to her pubic hair.
Though the videos were played and heard in court, they were only seen by the judge, complainant and accused. Tansey said the videos were traumatizing to watch.
Smith said, “These offences have had a horrendous impact on (the victim). She felt shame and humiliation because her whole community knew about the assault, and she feels unsafe and anxious. She was bullied (at school) and she was the subject of rumours. She became suicidal and (had) symptoms of PTSD.”
The morning after they terrorized the woman, two of her attackers — Ilunga and Mahinja — filmed themselves celebrating it in a car ride to Toronto.
In that video, Ilunga and Mahinja are seen and heard singing along to a song in the car. Ilunga made up her own lyrics to Brigade's Affaire de la rencune Rondo, and by doing so documented the attack.
“Chou Chou hits so hard, ah ah ah let's cut the pubic hair,” Ilunga is seen and heard singing.
It was Ilunga who posted the degrading images and she was also convicted of distributing intimate images. All three were convicted in 2019 of kidnapping, unlawful confinement, break and enter and sexual assault.
The judge said the publication of the images had a severe impact on the victim and described the crimes as a serious violation of her dignity and sexual integrity.
Ilunga, represented by Paolo Giancaterino, was sentenced to seven years, but after credit for pre-sentence custody and lockdowns at the jail, she will serve a further four years and five months.
Mahinja, 30, was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in prison, but after credit for pre-sentence custody will serve a further two years and four months. Unlike the ringleader, Mahinja has expressed remorse and had no criminal record before the July 2015 kidnapping and attack.
Tomba-Kalema, 40, was sentenced in absentia to a further two years and three months in prison. She skipped her sentencing hearing and remains at large.
The ringleader took the stand in her own defence and under cross-examination admitted to lying to police days after the attack. She was a combative witness who had trouble with her story, notably about when she was interrogating the victim and checked her phone, only to find a video of the victim having sex with her boyfriend. It was that sex video that infuriated Ilunga, who admitted to slashing the victim's couch with a knife, breaking her chair and kicking the TV over for good measure before leaving the apartment.
In her testimony at trial, Ilunga said she was already angry before she saw the video. She also couldn't recall her own 2002 conviction for assault causing bodily harm. She said she couldn't explain it and called it a mystery.
Under cross-examination at trial, she admitted that she took photos and videos of the naked woman against her will, but denied they were taken for blackmail or out of jealous rage. Cavanagh branded her a liar on the stand, and in the end the judge sided with the victim.
It's a case that has shaken Ottawa's tight-knit Congolese community.