Sexual assault of 84-year-old Montreal woman draws eight-year sentence
A man who broke into the home of an 84-year-old Côte-St-Luc woman in December and sexually assaulted her was sentenced Thursday to an eight-year prison term.
Quebec Court Judge Thierry Nadon said denunciation, dissuasion and protecting society were the most important factors in determining a sentence for Van Giau Do, 44, a resident of the St-Laurent borough.
The judge agreed with the recommendation prosecutor Anna Levine made last month when Do pleaded guilty to breaking and entering into the woman’s home with the intent to commit a crime, sexual assault.
“It was a veritable scene from a horror movie,” the judge said.
According to a joint statement of facts entered into the court record in February, sometime after 9 a.m. on Dec. 14 last year, the woman was at home watching television. During a commercial break, she headed to her basement to tend to a load of laundry. As she was about to return upstairs, she saw Do standing in her home nude from the waist down. He was only wearing a winter jacket.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?” the woman asked him.
She was not wearing her hearing aids when she had gone to the basement.
He responded by saying: “We are going upstairs” and threatened to rape the woman. She tried to call 911, but Do pushed her against a wall and grabbed her phone from her hands.
After he forced her into her bedroom, he told the woman: “You’ll be good to me, I’ll be good to you.”
He also took off his winter jacket and sexually assaulted her. When she tried to flee, Do slapped her several times and punched her in the neck.
Minutes later, Do began walking around the woman’s house. When she left her bedroom a couple of times, he stopped her and said: “If you’re not gonna be helpful to me, you’ll stay on the floor.”
He then began to disconnect the telephone land lines inside the home. The woman used the opportunity to flee from the home. Barefoot and dressed in her pyjamas, she found safety at a neighbour’s house.
When the Montreal police arrived, they entered the woman’s home to secure the crime scene and spotted Do as he ran through her backyard. He was arrested on the spot.
Investigators believe he entered the woman’s home through a broken window in the basement and that she didn’t hear him because she wasn’t wearing her hearing aids.
When Do pleaded guilty on Feb. 6 to breaking and entering to commit a sexual assault, he said he was high on crystal meth when he committed the crimes. His defence lawyer, Louis Peter Morena, argued Do’s use of the drug could be a mitigating factor toward a 30-month prison term.
A written statement from the woman was read aloud in court when Do pleaded guilty. She said she was “grateful to be alive” and is now “constantly looking over my shoulder.”
“The answer lies in the need to say, as loud as the judicial system can say it, that conduct of this kind will simply not be tolerated. In particular, potential victims must be assured that the law protects them, and potential offenders must know that if they dare to commit such offences, the firm hand of the law, not kids’ gloves, will be upon them,” Nadon said while quoting from a previous decision made in a similar case by an appellate court in Manitoba. “(The quote) is appropriate and it applies (in Do’s case).”
Nadon also noted that Do has a criminal record that includes convictions for sexual assault.
In 2018 at the Montreal courthouse, he pleaded guilty to sexual assault and was sentenced to a five-month prison term. The judge in that case also ordered that Do be placed on Canada’s sex offender registry for 20 years.
Earlier in 2018, he pleaded guilty to another sexual assault at a courthouse in Kuujjuaq. In that case, he was sentenced to a four-year prison term.