Man acquitted of 1984 murder of Candace Derksen sentenced to 10 years for sexual assault in B.C.

VANCOUVER – A man, who was acquitted of the 1984 murder of 13-year-old Winnipeg schoolgirl Candace Derksen, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a British Columbia woman.

A B.C. Supreme Court justice sentenced Mark Edward Grant on Monday for charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement.

The province’s prosecution service says the imposed sentence works out to nine years and 42 days after taking into account time served.

Grant was arrested in January after police said a woman in her sixties had been sexually assaulted by a man inside a residential building in the city’s Downtown Eastside.

Grant was found not guilty of second-degree murder in 2017 in the death of Derksen, who was last seen walking home from school in November 1984, after he was granted a new trial by the Supreme Court of Canada following a guilty verdict in 2011.

Derksen’s frozen body was found six weeks after she went missing, with her hands and feet bound, in an industrial shed, and Grant was arrested in 2007 and found guilty in 2011 based on DNA evidence from the twine used to bind Derksen.

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The Supreme Court of Canada, however, overturned the conviction two years later, leading to a new trial in 2017 where the DNA evidence was ruled to be flawed due to deterioration between the death and Grant’s first trial.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 11, 2026.