Edward Kiernan

Three young persons were sentenced following guilty pleas to sexual assault and sexual touching of a young person.

The offences involved repeated sexual assaults of a younger foster sibling over a 15-month period in a foster home.

The court found this to be an exceptional case meeting the custody threshold under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The court imposed custodial sentences ranging from 15 to 21 months, with varying periods of open or closed custody followed by community supervision and probation, along with conditions including no contact with the victim, weapons prohibitions, and DNA orders.

The appellant appealed his conviction for sexual assault against a young child, arguing the trial judge engaged in oath-helping, misapprehended evidence regarding his credibility, and provided insufficient reasons.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding the trial judge did not improperly use prior consistent statements, correctly identified inconsistencies in the appellant's testimony, and provided sufficient reasons that properly applied the W.(D.) framework.

A young person pleaded guilty to sexual assault contrary to section 271 of the Criminal Code.

The Crown applied for a serious violent offence (SVO) designation under section 42(9) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The court applied a two-phase test: first, determining whether the offence caused serious bodily harm and whether the young person caused that harm; second, exercising discretion to determine whether an SVO designation was necessary to hold the offender accountable.

While the court found the threshold test satisfied, it declined to make the SVO designation, finding that such designation was not necessary to achieve the purposes of youth sentencing in all the circumstances.

Following a motion to change where the applicant successfully obtained an increase in spousal support and defeated the respondent's cross-claim to fix a termination date, the applicant sought costs.

The court considered the offers to settle under Rule 18 and the costs factors under Rule 24 of the Family Law Rules.

Finding that the applicant was largely successful and the respondent had not made any offers to settle, the court awarded the applicant $2,500 in costs.