Crown wants four years for man who harassed ex online

A man who launched a revenge website to emotionally ruin his ex-wife shows no insight or remorse for his crime and should be sentenced to four years in prison, a Crown prosecutor said Wednesday.

Patrick Fox, 43, was found guilty in June by a jury of criminally harassing his former spouse, Desiree Capuano, through threatening emails and the website that maligns her as a white supremacist, drug addict and child abuser.

Crown prosecutor Mark Myhre told Fox’s sentencing hearing in B.C. Supreme Court that the man is intelligent, calculated and devoted to making Capuano’s life miserable.

“Just imagine that every day of your life you go about knowing that there’s a person out there with that dedication,” he said.

“They’ve done things to humiliate you, to affect your job prospects. They’ve told you they have plans for you that you haven’t even thought about . ... This person has also said they would kill you if they could get away with it.”

Fox, who is representing himself in court, denied that he had ever said he would kill Capuano. His exact words to their teenage son were that he would “shoot” her if he could get away with it, he told the judge.

Capuano, who lives near Tucson, Ariz., was laid off from her job and struggled to find new work because of the website, said Myhre. Despite her pleas to the police, the internet-hosting company and to Fox, the site remains online to this day, he said.

The harassment has left her feeling “isolated, beat up, powerless, frustrated,” Myhre said.

“She knew in the back of her head that this man wanted her dead and insinuated to her he could do it at any time. There seemed to be nothing she could do to make it stop,” he said.

“When you consider the weight of what Ms. Capuano has had to carry around every day during the period of Mr. Fox’s campaign of criminal harassment, it’s really quite overwhelming.”

The jury also found Fox guilty of possessing firearms in a place where he was not authorized to do so, after he shipped four restricted handguns to California.

Myhre said Fox should be sentenced to two to three years for criminal harassment, plus six to 12 months for the firearms offence. After accounting for time served, Fox would be incarcerated for two years less a day. The Crown is also asking that Fox serve three years’ probation. He asked the judge to make a determination that the website, on its own, constitutes criminal harassment. The finding would send a message to Fox to remove the site and deter others from making similar publications, he said.

Myhre said he is troubled by Fox’s lack of insight into how his own actions have led to his circumstances.

Fox blames Capuano for having him deported from the U.S. without their teenage son, but refuses to acknowledge he was in the country illegally and had previously told his ex-wife he planned to move to Canada, he said. She allowed the boy to visit his father in B.C., even though he would return home from the trips with less respect for his mother, Myhre said.

She knew in the back of her head that this man wanted her dead and insinuated to her he could do it at any time.