Andrew Raven
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 30/04) - A Yellowknife man has been sentenced to 13 months in jail for beating his cancer-stricken common law wife with her own prosthetic breast during a drunken rage.

"This court runs out of adjectives to describe and condemn actions like this," said Chief Judge Michel Bourassa. "This man needs to be put away."

The 39-year-old admitted Tuesday in territorial court to reaching into his wife's shirt and pulling out her prosthetic breast -- the result of a battle with cancer --during an argument in the couple's apartment on Feb. 8, 2004.

With the breast in hand, the man punched his wife in the face several times before tearing up the prosthetic and throwing it on the ground.

"What he did to this woman was repugnant," Ewenson told the court.

"She lost a breast to cancer and what he did was rub it in her face both figuratively and literally," Ewenson said.

The man pleaded guilty to one count of assault causing bodily harm Tuesday, just days before his trial on a total of three charges was set to begin.

The man's wife watched from the gallery, choking back tears as Ewenson described the attack.

The assault began, Ewenson said, when the woman asked two of her husband's friends to leave the couple's apartment following a night of heavy drinking.

After they left, the man, who was heavily intoxicated, became enraged and began punching his wife in the face.

The beating left the woman with two lacerations on her face. The conviction marked the fifth time in the couple's five year relationship that the man has been found guilty of assaulting his common law wife.

He received a total of 13 months in jail in 2000 for two assaults causing bodily harm and was convicted on a similar charge two years later.

Despite the history of abuse, his common-law wife -- who is undergoing treatment for cancer -- wants to continue the relationship, Ewenson told the court.