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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A 50-year-old Yellowknife man who sexually assaulted his adult stepdaughter was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison on July 8.

Besides the prison term, Justice Louise Charbonneau issued a 10-year firearms ban, ordered the offender to provide a sample of his DNA to the RCMP's data bank and placed him on the National Sex Offender Registry for 20 years.

The victim, now 35, was home from college for the holidays, visiting her mother in Yellowknife, when she was attacked on Jan. 4, 2010. That evening, while her mother was away on business, the victim and her stepfather played cards, drank beer and listened to music. After the stepfather made a sexually inappropriate comment to her, she became angry and threw her drink in his face. He responded by punching her in the face, causing her to fall backwards and hit her head on a bookcase, said Charbonneau, who recounted the fact of the case. When the woman regained consciousness, the man was having intercourse with her without a condom on a bed, said the judge.

She told him to stop and struggled to free herself, but he continued and uttered derogatory remarks to her that she "wanted it" and was "asking for it." After the attack, the woman went into the living room and fell asleep on the couch, said Charbonneau.

"She was in a place where she had every right to think she was safe and ought to have been safe," the judge said before delivering the sentence in the Supreme Court of the NWT. "He and only he is responsible for what he did."

The attack left the woman with bruises on her body and a swollen lip. She filed a complaint with the RCMP on Jan. 20, 2010.

On May 10, 2010, the stepfather was charged with sexual assault.

He pleaded guilty to one of the charges on June 17, after which Crown prosecutor Duane Praught dropped a second charge of sexual assault involving the same woman for an attack that allegedly occurred in December 2008 in Yellowknife.

Praught requested a prison term of four to five years whereas defence lawyer Caroline Wawzonek asked the judge for a lesser term in the range of 18-24 months.

Charbonneau said the 42-month sentence was appropriate given previous similar cases which were based on a three-year starting point for a convicted adult sex offender with no prior criminal record and formerly of good character who commits a major sexual assault. The sentence was elevated to 42 months after the judge considered several aggravating factors, including the emotional and psychological harm the attack caused the woman, that the attack breached the trust between family members and the degree of force that was imposed on an incapacitated and vulnerable woman.

Charbonneau gave the offender credit for pleading guilty instead of proceeding to trial, for the hardships of his aboriginal upbringing on a reserve in Alberta, how he overcame those hardships and that he got an education and held employment in the mining industry for 11 years.

She also noted the man was an active member in his community and his church. Charbonneau added that the man's wife of 15 years forgave and supported her husband despite the sexual attack on her daughter.

Yellowknifer is not identifying the offender as doing so could also identify the complainant, whose identity is protected by a court-ordered publication ban.

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