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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Days before retiring from the Supreme Court, Senior Judge John Vertes rejected the Crown's "excessive" request of six to seven years and instead sentenced a man convicted of molesting three girls to 36 months in prison on Monday.

Vertes gave Gordon Randolf Larsen, 57, credit for six months in pre-sentence custody, leaving 30 months left to serve.

Larsen declined to speak to the court when asked. Instead, he sat with his arms folded, staring straight ahead. He quietly left the courtroom after hearing the sentence.

Vertes found Larsen guilty on March 23, of three counts of sexual interference for molesting the three girls between Aug. 15, 1989, and Feb. 28, 1994, in Yellowknife. Larsen denied he molested any of the children during his testimony at the two-day trial.

The three complainants, now adults, also testified. The first complainant told the court how Larsen, a friend of the family living in their basement, came into her bedroom several times over the years when her parents were asleep and molested her. She cried when she told the court how she would pretend to be asleep during the attacks. She was eight years old at the time.

Larsen also molested the woman's younger sister when she was six and eight years old.

The offender was living with the third complainant's family - a different family from his first victims - when he groped her for several minutes in the living room one night. She was nine years old at the time.

Vertes did grant Crown prosecutor Marc Lecorre's other sentencing requests - that Larsen provide a sample of his DNA to the RCMP's national data bank, be banned from owning a firearm for 10 years, be registered as a sex offender for 20 years and that he be banned for life from volunteering or working with children under the age of 16.

Larsen's lawyer, Brian Beresh of Edmonton, requested a sentence of two-years-less-a-day and probation after his release.

Beresh argued the offences were not major sexual assaults since they didn't involve penetration, and further that Larsen was not in a position of trust with the three complainants.

Vertes agreed that the offences didn't constitute a breach of trust. Even though Larsen did babysit from time to time, he would only do so occasionally. There was no indication any of the attacks occurred while he was babysitting any of the girls, said Vertes.

Larsen left Yellowknife in 1994 and was last living in Haines Junction, Yukon, at the time of his arrest. Over the years, he worked as a labourer in the trucking and transportation industry. The sisters' mother filed a complaint with the Yellowknife RCMP in April 2010. Both girls testified they told their mother of the sexual assaults, but each time the mother got mad and said she didn't believe them. However, the mother finally started believing the girls after receiving a phone call from the older sister's high school teacher after the girl wrote an essay describing the sexual assaults.

Larsen's criminal record, although lengthy with 12 prior convictions, included none for crimes of a sexual nature.

The sentence breaks down as two years for molesting both sisters and one year for molesting the third complainant. Only the third complainant was in court to hear Vertes' sentence on Monday.

On Tuesday, Larsen's lawyer filed an appeal with the court, arguing that Vertes erred in applying certain rules, evidence and principles in his conviction, and that he erred by unreasonably rejecting Larsen's evidence during the trial. Larsen is also arguing he was deprived of "effective assistance" and subsequently to his right to a fair and full trial because of his original lawyer Tracy Bock. For sentencing, Larsen replaced Bock as his lawyer.

Larsen will appear before a judge on July 11, 2011 in chambers seeking his release on bail while the appeal is pending.

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