By Emeka Nze
A 61-year-old Ottawa man has been sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to sexually abusing his daughter and getting her pregnant when she was 13 years old.
The father was sentenced on Oct. 2 on one count of sexual interference with a person under 14.
Court documents say the man is not remorseful and initially denied raping his daughter, only to later tell Ottawa police detectives that he “felt badly after” and knew he had “done something wrong.”
There is no victim-impact statement. Victim-services workers who met with the girl several times said she’s not in a position to articulate the effect of the sexual violence.
Ottawa Assistant Crown Attorney Malcolm Savage told court that the teen girl remains in psychiatric care and that the impact of the sexual violence is profound.
The horrifying incest-rape case was revealed when a fellow student acted on the “see something, say something” model and told a guidance counsellor she thought the girl was pregnant. Ottawa police were called and the girl gave a detailed statement the next day about several years of abuse.
Ontario Court Justice Peter Doody noted that the father’s guilty plea spared his daughter the “further trauma of having to testify and be cross-examined.”
There is a publication ban on the identity of the offender to shield the identity of his victim.
The judge also ordered that the man be registered for 20 years on Canada’s sex-offender registry.
-Torontosun