A BC Court of Appeal tribunal rejected a man’s bid to overturn his April 2024 conviction for the sexual interference of his stepdaughter before she was 10 years old.
The case is under a publication ban to protect the girl’s identity. The guilty man, who worked in the construction industry, had no prior criminal history. He preyed on the girl beginning in Calgary and later in Prince George.
BC Supreme Court Justice Wendy Baker found the stepfather touched the girl for a sexual purpose 12 to 20 times between May 2016 and February 2018 and sentenced him to five years in jail in October 2024.
Baker also found him guilty of sexual assault and invitation to touch, but proceeded on the most serious charge due to a court rule against more than one conviction for the same crime.
Baker said the sentence for abusing a child must reflect denunciation and deterrence because the man was “highly morally blameworthy in his deliberate, sustained sexual exploitation of K.P., his stepdaughter, for his own gratification.”
But, in his appeal, heard on Dec. 10, the man claimed Baker misapprehended evidence, erred by concluding redness and soreness around the victim’s vagina was evidence of abuse and improperly assessed the credibility of witnesses.
Justice Peter Edelmann wrote the Jan. 29 ruling, with agreement from Justices Janet Winteringham and Margot Fleming.
“First, even if the alleged misapprehensions of the evidence could be properly characterized as misapprehensions rather than differing interpretations, they were not material to the trial judge’s reasoning,” said Edelmann’s summary. “Second, it was open to the trial judge to find that the complainant’s symptoms were consistent with the alleged abuse. Finally, when reading the reasons as a whole, it is clear that the trial judge was not engaged in a credibility contest and assessed the appellant’s testimony in the context of the rest of the evidence.”
Baker’s sentencing decision said the girl suffered serious psychological harm.
“This harm has manifested itself in her cutting herself, locking herself in her room, being too fearful to tell her mother at the time the abuse was happening because of the impact her disclosure would have on her family, panic attacks, flashbacks, struggles in school, lack of trust, and disruptions of normal relationships with her peers,” Baker wrote.
