Judge says girl, 6, at risk because mom defended pedophile stepdad
Last Updated: June 8, 2010 9:29pm
A remorseless pedophile who forced his five-year-old stepdaughter to perform oral sex on him every morning was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary Tuesday.
The 39-year-old man, who can’t be named to protect the girl’s identity, was also ordered not to communicate with the girl or with her mother when she's alone with the girl while he's in prison or for a year after he gets out.
“The complainant is at great risk as her mother has chosen the accused and his best interests over the complainant’s,” Judge Catherine Kehoe said.
“She has indicated she intends to live with the accused no matter the sentence. It’s only a matter of time, without intervention, that the victim would be back living with the accused.”
Kehoe ordered that her judgement be sent to the child’s caseworker at the Children’s Aid Society. The court did not hear where the child, who has a loving grandmother, is now living.
At last report, the girl was with her mother, who the judge concluded “concocted” a story to protect her common-law husband, who sexually abused the girl in the next room.
She also manipulated her daughter to try to get her to recant — “it seems over the promise of a bigger house,” Kehoe said.
The judge convicted the man of sexual assault, sexual interference and inviting the girl to touch him, finding the “intelligent and precocious” child, then six, a more believable witness than her parents.
The girl testified that she was fondled and every morning she could agree to perform oral sex on the man or refuse in a “game.” Kehoe said the girl’s description of the act bolstered her credibility.
The man hasn’t acknowledged what he’s done, claiming the girl accidentally kissed his penis as he left the bathroom naked.
What he did is “one of the most serious breaches of trust possible,” Kehoe said.
Yet “he continues to maintain he’s being victimized.”
A psychiatrist concluded the man is aroused and gets sexual gratification from contact with or fantasy about pre-pubescent and pubescent children and deemed him a low-to-moderate risk to reoffend.
The judge said that she doesn’t believe the man’s ever-changing stories of being sexually abused himself but noted it’s ironic that he says he was wounded by his parents’ disbelief yet now denies abusing the girl, who may be left with lifelong emotional scars.
megan.gillis@sunmedia.ca