Last of five sentenced in Craigslist child sex abuse case
The last of five criminals sentenced in a Hamilton child sexual assault and pornography case that the Crown calls ‘horrible and despicable’ has been given a seven-year prison sentence.
With time already spent in pretrial custody, the man has three years and four months left in a federal penitentiary.
The 38-year-old was sentenced on Tuesday. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to sexual interference and was found guilty of making child pornography.
His sentencing brings to an end a horrific two-and-a-half-year case in which five adults were charged and sentenced for their sexual abuse of a young Hamilton girl — and the videotaping of it — starting when the girl was just six.
The girl’s stepfather — sentenced in February to 13 years — repeatedly sexually assaulted the girl and solicited others, including via Craigslist, to take part in the sessions.
The man sentenced on Tuesday is the stepfather’s best friend. He and the stepfather cannot be named in order to protect the victim’s identify.
The man was arrested in May 2016 following a police investigation, known as Project Links, into the repeated sexual assaults, which were also used for child pornography.
The stepfather filmed the abuse he and others inflicted on the girl after he took her from her bed in the middle of the night to be assaulted in the basement of his partner’s Hamilton home.
His abuse spanned from June 2015 to his arrest in April 2016.
Police seized nearly 4,000 images and 15 videos containing the explicit sexual assault from the time the girl was six until she was nearly eight, court heard previously. The abuse followed a typical pattern of the stepfather waiting for everyone in the house, including the mother, to fall asleep. He would then carry the girl downstairs, dress her in lingerie, abuse her and record it all. The abuse only stopped when the girl told her biological father that her mom’s boyfriend wakes her up in the middle of the night, “spanks her bottom, does disgusting things to her” and tells her not to tell anyone or she’ll be in big trouble.
The girl’s father called the Catholic Children’s Aid Society, which alerted police.
On Tuesday, court heard again how the stepfather invited his best friend to watch while he assaulted the girl and then gave him a turn, while filming it.
In sentencing the friend, Justice Joseph Fiorucci noted that “no sentence can heal the devastating effect the assaults had on the victim.”
Fiorucci said the man, 35 at the time, became aware of his friend’s abuse of the girl a month before watching videos of the assaults and was invited to join in. Fiorucci added that the man did nothing to stop the abuse and in fact participated in it, “and aided and abetted the stepfather.”
Crown prosecutor Janet Booy said outside court afterwards, “It’s been a horrible, despicable case. Probably the worse I’ve seen in all my years. The videos were just too horrific for words.”
Booy credited Hamilton police, and Det. John Tselepakis in particular, for their diligent work in finally being able identify the perpetrators seen in the videos.
The girl’s aunt has come to attend all of the perpetrators’ court appearances and sentencings, and has given heartwrenching victim impact statements before each sentencing.
On Tuesday outside court, she said: “I can only hope my niece is able to have a normal life. It’s time to start healing. It’s been a long road.”
The girl now lives with her biological father in another municipality.