Judge sends message to drunken sex predators

Justice Robert Kilpatrick sent a strong message last week to drunken predators who sexually assault sleeping victims.

In a judgment issued Aug. 11, Kilpatrick sentenced an Iqaluit man with no previous criminal record to 18 months in prison and two years of probation for sexually assaulting a sleeping teenage girl.

“Given the frequency of this type of offence in Iqaluit, there is an emphatic need in this case to send a clear and unequivocal message to the community of Iqaluit that sexual offences involving sleeping victims, particularly young people, will result in a serious consequence,” Kilpatrick said.

Terry Nookiguaq, 37, sexually assaulted his 16-year-old niece, whose name may not be published, on March 12, after the girl had fallen asleep while babysitting at Nookiguaq’s residence.

Kilpatrick said that when the girl awoke, it was “to a living nightmare.” Nookiguaq, who had pulled down her clothes, was having unprotected sexual intercourse with her. He stopped after she told him to, then offered to perform oral sex.

The girl pushed him away, fled the residence, and eventually reported the incident to the RCMP. After police charged him with sexual assault, Nookiguaq pleaded guilty soon after.

“By doing so he has spared this young victim the trauma of having to relive the ordeal in a public courtroom. This is to Mr. Nookiguaq’s credit,” Kilpatrick noted in his sentencing judgment.

But despite that mitigating factor, and the man’s lack of a prior criminal record, Kilpatrick did not accept a submission from the defence lawyer, Chris Debicki, that the man should receive a conditional house arrest sentence.

Relying on recent case law, especially a judgment written by Antonio Lamer, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Kilpatrick said sentencing is now “an inherently individualized process.”

This means sentences may vary across communities and regions depending on the needs and characteristics of the community where the crime occurred.

For that reason, house arrest sentences may be a “devastating sanction” to Inuit in small communities who hunt and still live a traditional life.

But in Iqaluit, Kilpatrick said, where most people make their living in the wage economy and live indoors, in an urban way, house arrest is not a strong sanction.

“The deterrent effect of such a sentence will be reduced, because the lifestyle that is most affected by confinement is not shared by many of the urban residents of Iqaluit,” Kilpatrick said.

He noted that Nookiguaq works in Iqaluit’s wage economy, does not hunt for food, spends most of his free time at home, and is therefore “largely urbanized in his focus and his lifestyle.”

And because Iqaluit, in particular, suffers from numerous sexual assaults on sleeping victims, there is a strong need in the community to deter such crimes.

Kilpatrick also pointed out that courts of appeal throughout the country “have repeatedly stressed the need to emphatically repudiate and denounce this type of conduct.”

He did, however, recommend that Nookiguaq be considered for an early work release, or for release to a treatment facility for alcoholism.

Nookiguaq must give a sample of his DNA for storage in a national data bank, surrender all firearms, and have his name listed in a sex offender registry.