‘The abuse… cannot get any worse’

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This article was published 01/05/2025 (320 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg mother facing a possible four-decade-long prison sentence for sexually abusing her two children claims she was under threat to record sex acts with the victims by their stepfather’s gang associates, a court heard Wednesday.

The 36-year-old woman has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual interference and two counts of making child pornography. Her 40-year-old former partner has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual interference.

Court heard the two offenders, individually and as a couple, repeatedly abused the woman’s son and daughter over a three-year period, ending when they were 15 and 12 years old, respectively.

The children at the time lived with their maternal grandparents and were abused during bimonthly visits to their mother’s home.

The maximum sentence for both sexual interference and making child pornography is 14 years in prison.

Crown attorney Alanna Littman argued the female offender’s “heinous” crimes justified a maximum total sentence of 56 years, before recommending it be reduced for totality to 44 years.

The totality principle is invoked when consecutive sentences are imposed and recognizes sentences must not be disproportionate and must reflect the degree of responsibility of the offender.

“The abuse that (the female offender) inflicted on her children… cannot get any worse,” Littman told provincial court Judge Stacy Cawley. “If ever there was a case for the maximum to be imposed, this is it…. These children have been sentenced to a life of damage, of hurt and suffering, as a result. For this family, time does not heal the damage caused.”

Co-Crown counsel Kevin Minuk recommended the male offender be sentenced to 28 years in prison.

“Whatever sentence is imposed on these two individuals today, that sentence will end one day… and they will be able to step out of custody,” Minuk said. “The sentence for the children goes on forever…. The children will carry the load of this trauma like a boulder on their shoulders forever.”

The two offenders sat in the prisoner’s box, separated by a Sheriff’s officer, their heads hanging down, as a police officer played a sampling of the abuse videos for Cawley.

The children disclosed the abuse to an aunt in May 2023 after which Child and Family Services was contacted and statements were provided to investigators.

According to an agreed statement of facts previously provided to court, the children’s parents had not yet been charged when police responded to a domestic violence call at the couple’s home on June 1 and the male offender “spontaneously indicated to officers… that he had touched both children sexually in the past and needed to go to jail.”

The children’s mother was arrested later that day and police seized her cellphones that were later found to be storing a dozen videos and seven pictures depicting her engaged in sex acts with the children and the children engaged in sex acts with each other.

Court heard the woman forced the children to participate in sexual acts by threat, warning them that if they did not comply, other people would go to the house and hurt the family.

According to a pre-sentence report prepared for court, the woman claimed she abused the children under threat of harm from the male offender’s gang associates. She claimed she provided the videos to the male offender to give to the gangsters.

“There is evidence she genuinely believed there was a threat… that would be followed through by someone else,” said her lawyer Erica Brenner, who recommended she be sentenced to no more than 15 years in prison. “This is not a normal situation. She indicated there were threats and that she had no sexual gratification from the encounters.”

Littman said the claim had “no air of reality,” and that there was no evidence the child-abuse videos had been distributed to others.

Aside from a problematic history with men, Brenner could provide little in the way of explanation for her client’s actions, noting she had no criminal record and no history of addictions.

The male offender, who admitted repeatedly abusing both children on his own and with their mother, said he was aware the woman was recording sex acts with the children, but did not do so himself. The man “vehemently denies” sharing the videos with gang members, said his lawyer Tony Kavangh, who recommended he be sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Child sex abuse videos “are the last thing he would send to them — he would be labelled a ‘skinner’ (street slang for pedophile),” Kavanagh said.

Victim impact statements provided by the female offender’s two sisters described a family left broken and devastated by her betrayal.

“Our family has been forever changed.… You took so much from so many people,” one sister wrote. “I don’t even know who you turned into, and that hurts me to my core.”

Cawley will sentence the two offenders at a later date.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca