Superior Court Justice Gordon Thomson then set aside the conviction and ordered the Toronto actor committed to a mental institution for a maximum of three years.
If Mr. Rosato is judged to be cured before that time, he will be released; if he is not, he will then face civil committal proceedings.
Normally, defendants found not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder are committed to a mental hospital but may never get out from under court supervision.
Wednesday's decision sets a time line for how long they may be supervised by the courts.
Judge Thomson agreed to Crown laywer Priscilla Christie's request that the court grant a conditional discharge with a probation order requiring Mr. Rosato to get psychiatric treatment.
“This balances the interests of the accused with the interests of the victim and the public,” Ms. Christie told the court.
The judge noted that he found Mr. Rosato's rambling and often incoherent testimony on Tuesday “a very bizarre hour of evidence.”
Mr. Rosato, who suffers from Capgras syndrome, described how he concluded his wife was not the woman he married — speculating she had been replaced by twins or triplets — and that his infant daughter had also been replaced.
Mr. Rosato said he believes Leah Rosato's face was digitally removed from their wedding photos and another woman's put in and doubts it was even her who testified against him at the preliminary hearing.
He also said that during a court-ordered supervised visitation with his baby daughter, another couple's child was handed to him by a Children's Aid worker.
In his verdict, the judge said that Mr. Rosato's evidence did not raise any reasonable doubt in his mind that Mr. Rosato harassed his wife.
Judge Thomson stated that he was satisfied that Mr. Rosato did “frighten, scare, annoy, bedevil... badger..., continuously or chronically, until he wore his young wife down with fear and exhaustion.”
Mr. Rosato had pleaded not guilty.
The judge cited Leah Rosato's testimony that her husband had been abusive, that he had said her family was connected to pedophilia and incest, that he had called his wife “crack-whore” when she breastfed their baby and had said she was impure and needed to be purified, and that he shook the baby, yelled in her ears and was afraid of beings called “astral attackers.”
The judge noted in his verdict that Tony Rosato had become so controlling he forced his wife to cut off all contact with her family, and forced her to denounce them in a letter.
Mr. Rosato protested the verdict, claiming he had not been allowed to defend himself.
“I said ‘Excuse me, this is not my daughter,”' he recalled.
Mr. Rosato, born in Naples, Italy, joined SCTV in its final season in 1980, his best-known character a tippling TV chef named Marcello Sebastiano. He appeared on Saturday Night Live for one season in 1981, then in 1985 began a four-year stint on the popular Canadian police drama Night Heat.
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