Father gets 21 years, mother 18, for ‘relentless’ abuse of children

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The family home, the judge said, was “a house of horrors.”

Superior Court Justice Thomas Heeney, in his decision to sentence two parents to long prison sentences for routinely sexually and physically abusing their four children during an 18-year period, said the facts of the case were “the most egregious that I have encountered during my 26 years on the bench.”

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Indeed, during nine weeks earlier this year, the jury at the trial of the father, aged 57, and the mother, aged 55, listened to harrowing evidence from four young adults who described a childhood of sadistic torture at the hands of their parents between 2002 and 2020.

To the outside world, it was “a large, active and happy household,” Heeney said.

“But behind closed doors, it was a different story.  It was, for these four victims, a house of horrors, where they were subjected to years of ongoing physical, sexual and psychological abuse by their parents.”

“One could characterize this as a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde scenario where the offenders present as caring parents to the outside world, while being tormentors of their children in the privacy of their home.”

By the end of his lengthy decision where he described the terrible acts inflicted on the victims, Heeney sentenced the father to 21 years in prison and the mother to an 18-year term.

Factoring in the father’s time in custody, plus the four physical attacks on him by fellow inmates while he has been in custody, one of which left him with a detached retina, the man has 16 years and seven months left to serve.

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The mother, who was in custody briefly but has been out on bail, first under house arrest and then, with an electronic ankle bracelet, had her sentence reduced to 17 years and five months with credits applied to it.

However, her defence lawyer Philip Millar confirmed he was seeking bail on Monday afternoon pending appeal of the case.

The identities of the four victims, all of whom are in their 20s, and by extension the identities of their parents, are protected by court order.

The parents went to trial on 41 counts including incest, sexual assault, assault, forcible confinement and administering noxious substances. The jury convicted the mother of 18 counts and the father of 15 counts.

The victims “described being subjected to relentless physical and sexual abuse by their parents, including incest, sexual assault, forcible confinement and other physical, sexual and psychological abuse, which haunted virtually their entire childhood and adolescence, until they escaped the family home in March 2020, never to return,” Heeney said.

What complicated the sentencing process was the sheer number of convictions. The Crown had argued for a 30-year sentence for the mother, reduced to 25 years based on the legal principle of totality, which is applied if a sentence is considered unduly lengthy or harsh. Her defence suggested an 11 ½ year sentence, to be reduced to 10 years using the same principle.

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The Crown’s suggested total sentence for the father was 37 years, adjusted to 30 years for totality before a three-year reduction for his pre-sentence custody. His defence argued for a 31 ½ year sentence, adjusted to 19 ½ years.

Heeney’s assessment of each conviction added together led to a total sentence for the mother of 20 years and 10 months, while the father’s total sentence was 34 ½ years before reducing the terms based on the legal totality principle to 21 years for him and 18 years for her.

When arriving at the final sentence, Heeney noted the father’s convictions included sexually violating three of the children, while the mother sexually violated one child, aided her husband’s sexual assault of another and encouraged another child to sexually touch her. However, he said her “overall culpability was a little different” than that of the father.

“While (the mother) sexually victimized one less victim, one cannot ignore all the other crimes she committed against her children,” he said, adding the children saw her as “their primary tormentor.”

While she was entitled to a totality deduction, Heeney said, hers should only be by a modest amount.

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The testimony of each victim was enormously troubling. The family lived in several Ontario cities before coming to London. The children were raised in a deeply religious home and were expected to abide by strict rules.

Along with volunteering activities, the children were expected to have jobs with their earnings returned to the family coffers, despite their father’s full-time professional employment.

There were “consequences,” as they called them, for not abiding by the wishes of their parents, including confinement to the basement, cupboards or backyard sheds, regular beatings, being tied up with rope or fishing line, having clothing stripped off and being forced to drink liquid soap or hot sauce for “perceived bad behaviour,” Heeney said.

“The quantities were large, equivalent to a whole mouthful of sauce or soap,” Heeney noted during his lengthy review of the facts. “If you threw up, (the mother) made you eat your own vomit.”

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One of the victims testified, “This was one of the worst consequences (they) had to endure.”

But most disturbing were the descriptions of the sexual abuse with both parents participating in touching and raping of their children. One of the victims described being sexually assaulted by her father with her mother’s participation when she was five. Another described injuries suffered from a particularly horrifying assault by the father. The judge said the children were used as “sexual playthings.”

Heeney called it “an ongoing and relentless campaign of abuse. This abuse effectively stole their childhoods from them, and left them with psychological wounds that may well be permanent.”

“Each offender was not only abusing the victims themselves, but also did nothing to protect the children from the abuse that the other was perpetrating,” Heeney said.

He said the crimes were further exacerbated by the strict discipline in the home where the children were instructed never to tell anyone what was happening to them.

The abuse came to light when one of the children secretly called the Kids Help Phone, setting in motion a series of events that led to the mother leaving the family, the father continuing the abuse and the children eventually fleeing.

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Neither parent had a criminal record. The mother participated in a pre-sentence report and submitted several letters of support to the court. She maintained her innocence both while testifying and during a statement to the court.

“I found her comments, both at trial and at the sentencing hearing to be melodramatic, contrived and thoroughly unconvincing,” Heeney said.

The father testified at the trial, denying the allegations, but did not give a statement at his sentencing hearing.

Heeney said the parents’ degree of responsibility “is enormous.”

“These crimes did not arise out of a momentary lapse of judgment, but instead amounted to a conscious decision to hurt, torment and violate these vulnerable children many times, in many different ways, over many years,” he said.

Before she was led away by court security, the mother sobbed and hugged her defence lawyer.

The father sat silently, looking straight ahead, before nodding at his defence lawyer, before the couple was led away.

jsims@postmedia.com

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