Montreal North rapist sentencing arguments
A young man who admitted he sexually assaulted nine young women in Montreal North heard from some of his victims today at his sentencing hearing.
The crimes took place between November 2005 and October 2006.He pleaded guilty back in February. He would prowl the streets of Montreal North, asking his victims for the time or for directions and then pull them into an alley or behind a building and sexually assault them. Sometimes he'd threaten them with a knife.
The young man who can't be identified because he was under 18 at the time of the crimes sat impassively throughout the hearing, even as four of his nine young victims tearfully told the court how the attacks affected their lives.
Crown prosecutor Sylvie Lemieux says the young women aged in their late teens and early 20s suffer from post-traumatic stress, are scared of being alone, scared someone is always following them, scared of being around black people because their aggressor is black. One woman told the court she feels rage more than anything else, addressing her attacker directly and telling him she hopes he realizes what he's done and she hopes he's sorry because she doesn't see it in his face.
A pre-sentencing report describes the man as someone who sees nothing wrong with what he's done, who described his actions as if he were reading a grocery list, who committed his crimes out of boredom, something that made his victims gasp in the courtroom, and who stopped only because he thought he was going to get caught.
The crown is seeking an adult sentence, the maximum would be 14 years. As a youth, he'd only get possibly three years.
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