Dangerous offender hearing set

Three weeks have been set aside in a St. Catharines courtroom for a hearing to determine if a former Niagara man, convicted of raping and sodomizing his children, should be jailed indefinitely.

The defendant who cannot be identified due to a court-ordered publication ban that prohibits publishing information that would identify the victims, appeared in a Superior Court of Justice on Tuesday.

The former St. Catharines resident was convicted in November 2015 of 18 counts of physical and sexual-abuse related offences.

Soon after the convictions, the Crown’s office announced it would be seeking to have the man declared a dangerous offender.

If a court rules a person a dangerous offender, they could be sentenced to jail for an indefinite period. The law is intended to protect the public from the most dangerous violent and sexual predators.

In court on Tuesday, Judge Joseph Henderson was told a psychiatrist’s report requested by the defence should be made available to the Crown early next week.

The man will return to court May 8 for a hearing on the dangerous offender application. The court proceeding is expected to last three weeks.

At trial, court heard the man raped and sodomized his children on several occasions.

One daughter testified the abuse began when she was seven or eight after her father showed her a pornographic film of a man abusing a child.

Court heard that he told her, “This is how a father acts with his children.”

The man also coerced his son, then nine, to sexually assault his seven-year-old sister. He told the children “it was normal between brothers and sisters.”

The defendant, who has lived both in Niagara and Quebec, has been in custody since 2010.