LETHBRIDGE, AB – **Warning – graphic content in this article**
Note: Due to a publication ban protecting the names of the victim and family members, the guilty party cannot be named as well.
A Lethbridge man has learned he will be spending nine years in prison.
The man was found guilty of sexually assaulting a girl when she was aged 9-11.
He assumed a father-like position, as the Crown Prosecutors called it, when the girl’s biological father died.
The man then began getting close with the girl and started coercing her to pose for naked photos and acted like it was normal for a stepfather to do this.
Then, the man convinced her to perform oral sex on him at the age of 9-years-old. He began sexually assaulting her for a span of two years and the mother had no idea these events were happening.
The Crown was told he had sexual intercourse with the child over 100 times over the span of two years, generally occurring twice a week.
The man is 44 years older than the child and sometimes did not use condoms while having intercourse.
To not let the mother catch on, he and the girl called it “reading time” in the judge’s words. The Judge says, for her decision on the case, the young girls’ life was changed forever and these actions from the man took a hold of her at school.
The girl was told these acts were normal so she never told anyone about it. It wasn’t until she was 11 that she told a friend of hers about this.
Her friend told a teacher and the teacher alerted the police.
The man created collages of the naked photographs of the girl and called them in his words “art.”
These sexual photos of the girl may have been shared online and could be still out there on the internet.
The judge considers him an ongoing risk to re-offend, which contributed to her decision to sentence him to nine years in prison.
When he is out of prison, he shall not attend any place where there are people aged under the age of 16 present.
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