A violent pimp who tortured a 17-year-old teenager at gunpoint was sentenced to 8 and a half years in prison on Thursday. In addition to treating the victim as a sex slave in a hotel room, Steve Bédard offered more than 5000 dollars to, literally, buy the teenager.
The 29-year-old Montrealer was convicted last year of underage trafficking, sexual assault with a firearm and forcible confinement, among other things. He had also pleaded guilty during the trial to counts related to child pornography, in connection with this case. His accomplice, Benjamin Dion, was sentenced to 7 years in prison last February.
The circumstances of this case are particularly horrific. The victim was forced into prostitution for days in a downtown Montreal hotel in August 2019. “You’re not getting out of there until Saturday. You do your shift,” Steve Bédard, aka “Stevo,” would tell him. “Clients” paid $280 an hour to assault the victim.
Steve Bédard and Benjamin Dion also repeatedly sexually assaulted the teenager, while her hands were handcuffed behind her back and she was heavily intoxicated. In footage of an assault, the two men can be heard snickering. On one occasion, the pair used a gun, a sordid sexual assault that was even caught on camera.
These horror images ended up on social networks, since the two pimps were selling the teenager’s sexual services. This is what caused the loss of the two pimps. Following a denunciation, the Tactical Intervention Group managed to save the victim from the clutches of his executioners.
Even if the project did not materialize, Steve Bédard wanted to buy the teenager to make her his sex slave. “Steve offered a lot of money. He wanted to buy me expensive, $5,000, $10,000. I would have worked when he wanted, how he wanted, ”the victim told the police. He also considered moving the teenager to Edmonton to offer his sexual services.
There are many aggravating factors in this case. Judge Alexandre St-Onge noted the accused’s “leadership” role, the vulnerability of the minor victim, his “advanced” state of intoxication and the premeditation of the crime. The judge also accepted the fact that Steve Bédard filmed and recorded the sexual assault in order to “enslave” the victim.
Detained for almost four years, Steve Bédard still presents a “high” risk of recidivism and displays many antisocial traits. But due to the time spent in preventive detention, calculated at time and a half, he has only three years left to serve on his sentence.
