Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services

Fort Providence (June 03/02) - A Fort Providence man has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for sexually assaulting a woman while she slept.

Dennis (a.k.a. Phillip) Tonka entered the victim's home through an unlocked door at about 3 a.m. on Jan. 11. He proceeded to the victim's bedroom, where she was sleeping next to her common-law husband.

In Yellowknife territorial court last Wednesday Crown prosecutor Paul Falvo said the husband awoke to find Tonka touching the woman's vagina and unclasping her bra.

"At first I thought it was a dream," the victim stated in a police report. "All of a sudden it was like someone feeling me up all over."

Once the victim and her husband realized what was happening Tonka fell off the bed. The victim then grabbed an object close to the bed and struck Tonka on the head.

The woman's husband threw Tonka out of the house, punched him several times and called the RCMP.

The court heard Tonka was intoxicated at the time. He had been inside the victim's home earlier on that evening and had left his shoes there. Tonka was not invited back in.

The following day Tonka turned himself in to the RCMP, with a large bruise on his forehead.

Tonka was convicted of sexual assault in 1992 and sentenced to one year in prison.

Defence lawyer Arthur Von Kursell said Tonka was abused as a child in Fort Rae. He was adopted by a family in Fort Providence at the age of six and has lived there since then.

Von Kursell said "this act makes no sense to his family members" adding they do not see him as a "monster or menace."

But Judge Michel Bourassa had no sympathy. A sexual assault on a sleeping woman in her own home is "gross, despicable," he said.

"It's the same person (drunk or sober) and it's nothing to say it wouldn't happen if he wasn't drinking."

Tonka was sentenced to 16 months in prison and a probationary period of one year. He also must submit a DNA sample to the RCMP.