Man sentenced to serve 90 days in jail for sexual interference with niece
A 27-year-old man with the intellectual comprehension of a 10-year-old thought he was having a consensual relationship with a “peer” when he had sex with his 15-year-old niece, a Saskatoon courtroom heard this week.
When the girl — who had been estranged from her family for years — met her uncle for the first time in 2014, the pair started texting and exchanging naked images, which eventually progressed to sexual intercourse in a mall parking lot, court heard. The victim’s mother found out about the illegal tryst and reported it to police.
The man, who is now 30 years old, can’t be named to protect the identity of his niece. He pleaded guilty to one count of sexual interference. The Crown agreed to proceed summarily on the charge, which carries a less severe minimum sentence of 90 days in jail compared to the oneyear minimum on the indictable version of the charge.
Defence lawyer Kevin Hill said he struggled to find an appropriate way to address the unique circumstances of the case. His client is semi-illiterate and has an extremely low IQ and the social skills of a mid-elementary school-aged child, according to the findings of a psychiatric report.
“I’m not confident he really understands how society sees (this) situation,” Hill said.
Crown prosecutor Lana Morelli said it’s “not right” that the family blames the victim, and the victim appears to blame herself. In her written statement, the girl said she did not want her uncle to go to jail because it wasn’t “all his fault.” She also described having anxiety attacks and feeling uncomfortable with her body.
Even if they were around the same age mentally, the offender was physically and biologically a man, Morelli argued.
The Crown and defence jointly proposed the 90-day minimum sentence. Hill said the offender’s cognitive disabilities require a different approach to sentencing, adding it’s likely he will never reoffend. Although a similar conclusion was reached through an assessment tool, Morelli said the man must learn to have “age appropriate relationships.”
Consent doesn’t matter in this case because an adult cannot legally have sex with a person under the age of 16, Judge Barry Morgan noted. However, he found the offender clearly believed he was in a “peer to peer” relationship. Court heard the man hasn’t breached any of his conditions and has a strong support network.
“You’ve got a lot of positives going for you,” Morgan said before accepting the joint submission. He ordered the man to serve his 90-day sentence intermittently (strung out over a longer period of time) as a “better way to bring (the punishment) home.” The sentence also includes a three-year probation order. The offence is serious, and denunciation is the rule, but rehabilitative measures are necessary to prevent reoffending, Morgan ruled.