Night of terror inflicted on wife and her daughter worth 30-year sentence, judge told

A Manitoba man who bound and brutalized his common-law wife and sexually assaulted her young daughter during nearly eight hours of terror should be sentenced to 30 years in prison, a judge was told Thursday.

The 42-year-old man pleaded guilty to one count each of aggravated assault, sexual interference and forcible confinement, before Court of King’s Bench Justice Vic Toews.

Lawyers for the Crown and defence jointly recommended the three-decade term, the maximum total sentence allowed by law, and that he not be allowed to apply for parole until 10 years after he is sentenced.

The Free Press is not naming the offender or the First Nation on which the crimes occurred so as not to identify his victims. He will return to court for sentencing on Oct. 20, following the completion of a court-ordered pre-sentence report.

The offender had been drinking home brew on Dec. 10, 2023, when around midnight he got into a heated argument with his common-law wife about their relationship, Crown attorney Shannon Benevides told court, reading from an agreed statement of facts.

He knocked the woman to the floor and beat her, saying: “After tonight, none of us are going to be alive.”

Then he gave the woman a choice: be the victim of a murder-suicide, or allow herself to be tied up and watch the man kill himself.

The woman “allowed herself to be tied up, fearing further harm,” Benevides said.

The man used a torn-up bed sheet, shoelaces and string to hog-tie the woman. He continued to beat her until he heard their young daughter waking up in the living room. The man moved the girl to another child’s bedroom and closed the door.

Then he turned his attention to the woman’s young daughter from another relationship, and violently sexually assaulted her.

The girl’s mother, hearing the assault, yelled at the girl to come to her. When she did, the man told the mother “to choose between her or her daughter,” Benevides said.

The woman explained to (her daughter): ‘He is asking me to choose whether to kill me or you,’” Benevides said. The girl “indicated she did not want to die, and she did not want her mother to die.”

The man told the girl “he was going to choose” and ordered her out of the room, at which point he used a bed sheet to strangle the woman from behind.

When she lost consciousness, the man hog-tied the girl and repeatedly sexually assaulted her.

The girl later told police that after assaulting her, she saw the man with a knife and rubber hammer in the bathroom trying to kill himself.

Around 8:30 a.m., the man told the girl to untie herself, which she did, and told both victims he was not going to kill them before calling 911 and confessing to the attacks. He told the 911 operator he wanted police to shoot him when they arrived at the house.

“The accused was adamant he wanted to commit suicide by the police shooting him,” Benevides said.

The man initially refused police demands to leave the house, but after negotiations he agreed to release the three children before surrendering himself to officers.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca