A territorial judge condemned violence in Northern communities during a pair of sentencing hearings that saw hefty jail terms – and tough lectures – handed out to domestic abusers.
“You’re serving a life sentence on the installment plan,” said Judge Michel Bourassa in a Yellowknife courtroom Friday.
Bourassa’s comment, one of several blistering remarks made by the visiting judge, was aimed at a 36-year-old Tuktoyaktuk man, convicted Friday for a “vicious” June attack on a woman in the community.
The man, who isn’t being named to protect the identity of the victim, woke up the sleeping woman with a flurry of punches before choking her and throwing her to the ground. The court heard the man then dragged the woman on the floor and threw her down a flight of stairs.
Upon his arrest, the man made threats to Tuktoyaktuk RCMP officers and their families.
The offences committed by the man – whose childhood was marked by violence and drugs in the shadow of residential schools – are the latest in a long line of criminal record entries that Crown prosecutor Alex Godfrey described as being virtually “unbroken” over the last 17 years.
Given the lengthy record, which includes seven convictions for assault and another seven for uttering threats, Godfrey asked for a 10-month jail sentence followed by probation.
But Bourassa called 10 months behind bars “woefully inadequate.”
Citing the man’s 45 convictions – a tally that brings “devastating” effects to the small community of Tuktoyaktuk – Bourassa said a higher jail term was need to, “address the aggravating, non-stop criminality and danger (the offender) poses” in the hamlet.
“I can’t think of a sharper knife than a threat to family,” Bourassa said of the comments hurled to police by the man.
Bourassa handed the man a global sentence of 17 months in jail – almost double what the Crown had called for.
In another sentencing hearing that echoed the same themes of residential school trauma and recycled violence, Bourassa delivered a similar stern sentencing to a 29-year-old Fort Providence man – who isn’t being named to protect the identity of his victim – convicted for a string of domestic assaults and breaches of release conditions. His criminal record also includes 40 plus convictions.
“When he’s drunk, high, stoned, he’s a vicious man. You're giving the same home (you had) to your kids,” Bourassa told the defendant.
In a mayhem-filled month of May, the court heard the man committed a series of assaults against his common-law partner. In one incident, he kicked her in the head, pushing a witness who tried to intervene.
The court heard alcohol and drugs played a role in the bulk of the offences.
Bourassa said the, “humiliation, pain and beating” needed to be condemned. He mulled an 18-month sentenced before settling on 12 months, a term submitted by both the Crown and the man’s lawyer.
“You’re a breath away from a federal penitentiary,” Bourassa told the man. “At the bottom of every bottle there’s a jail sentence for you.”