A Montrealer who impregnated his intellectually retarded adult daughter was sentenced to 18 months in prison, despite numerous aggravating factors and almost no mitigating factors. The judge spared the defendant a heavy prison sentence so that he would not lose his apartment.
“The Court considers that it must take into account Mr.’s concerns that an excessively long prison sentence will cause him to lose his apartment and send him back into homelessness, he who has already been there and who came out,” Judge André Perreault concluded Friday at the Montreal courthouse.
At the end of the hearing, Crown prosecutor Me Jérôme Laflamme – who was asking for four years in prison – said he was evaluating the possibility of appealing the judgment.
Yet there was nothing to argue for the 52-year-old, other than his “below average” risk of reoffending. The list of aggravating factors was, however, very long: vulnerability of the victim, breach of trust, ill-treatment, long duration of the acts and, in particular, the fact of having made the victim pregnant.
The father and his 20-something daughter had about 50 sex over 10 months in 2015 and 2016. The father lost custody of his daughter at a young age but recently reunited with her, as she frequented homeless women’s shelters. It was therefore in his “parental role” that he accommodated him.
In a convoluted formulation, Judge André Perreault argues that this is a case of “incest that was not non-consensual.” However, in his judgment on guilt, last August, the judge said that the victim had felt obliged to comply, when she feared being hit or killed by her father.
Moreover, Judge André Perreault did not even mention in his judgment the father’s threats to his vulnerable daughter. Indeed, the father allegedly threatened to throw her remains in the garbage and told her that he would hand her over to 11 men to be raped.
The entourage discovered their incestuous relationship once the victim, pregnant with her father, suffered an abortion. At trial, the father went so far as to blame his son for the presence of his DNA in his daughter’s embryo. He also victimized his daughter, whom he described as a “sociopath.” He also denounced the “incest dogma”.
The accused defended himself, but Me Stephen Angers acted as amicus curiae to assist him during the trial.
