B.C. mother who sexually assaulted 15-year-old boy wins reduced sentence on appeal

A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has reduced the prison sentence of a Greater Victoria mother who was convicted of seducing and sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.

A woman, identified only as “Ms. P.” in court documents, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison last September in Colwood on two counts of sexual assault and one count of internet solicitation. .

P appealed the verdict and won a sentence from British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Anthony Saunders on Monday, which was reduced to three years in prison.

The crime stems from an incident in April 2020 when 25-year-old P. and a friend encountered a group of neighborhood boys who asked to provide alcohol to a woman in exchange for cannabis.

The woman agreed and bought alcohol for the boy, who then attended the party with the woman. During the party, Mr. P had sex with one of the boys in the bedroom.

A few days later, P sent a text message to a 15-year-old boy, inviting him back home for a “hot make-up party.”

The boy accepted the invitation and returned to her home, where the two had sex again. This led to a second sexual assault and internet lure charge.

The experience lowered the boy’s self-esteem and made it difficult for him to find happiness in the things he used to enjoy, he told the judge in a statement on the impact on victims.

“I stopped caring about life after this happened, and I really didn’t try anymore,” the victim said.

“It doesn’t matter which foot goes first. I used to care about my grades in school and lacrosse, but this changed my perspective. I overthinked everything… just sitting alone , I’m thinking about silly things I can’t do on my own.” Control and I feel stuck in those thoughts. “

State Court Judge Ted Gouge cited the boy’s continued emotional and physical distress as factors in his sentencing decision. He wrote that imposing sentences would “violate the rights of male offenders.”

“We need to refute the stereotype that teenage boys are less susceptible to the aftereffects of sexual assault than teenage girls,” he wrote.

The trial judge sentenced Mr. P to two years in prison for each count of sexual assault and an additional 18 months in prison for the lure charge.

The verdict was ‘clearly inadequate’

Ms P testified at trial that she asked the victim three times to confirm that she was 18 years old. Under her cross-examination, she admitted she was “a little skeptical” of his claim that he was not underage.

“The judge said she was aware of the risk that he might be under 16, and it was this awareness that she asked him to state his age three times. found that her skepticism was reckless and that she stayed with him even though it deprived her of the right to resort to an age-fault defense,” BC Supreme said. court judge said wrote in his decision reduce sentences.

The High Court found that the judges of the first instance “in principle made several serious errors and pronounced all judgments that were clearly unsuitable.”

Chief among the errors Sanders found was that lower court judges applied the “overall principle” that “when successive sentences are imposed, the combined sentence shall not be unduly long or severe.” It didn’t apply.

“From reading the pre-sentence report and the referral letter from her employer, the judge did not appear to understand that the petitioner, as an adult, had a responsibility to prevent sexual activity. “I have expressed concern that it appears

“A full account of the appellant’s moral responsibility would suggest that although the crimes are separate, they are all rooted in the appellant’s initial reckless failure to ascertain the true age of the victim. I should have recognized that

“Furthermore, given her moral responsibility in the lure crime, telecommunications equipment was used to invade the victim’s sphere of privacy and expose him to sexual exploitation, which was not the case with electronic media. We should have recognized that this was not a case of “grooming” potential victims and the degree of text message intrusion was at the lower end of the scale. “

Ms. P., the primary caregiver of her young son and has no criminal record, was re-sentenced to two years on the first count and one year on the second count of sexual assault, consecutively. She was also sentenced to a one-year concurrent sentence for luring a child.