Aarika Cheryl Heath

Sentencing following a jury conviction for sexual assault with a weapon, sexual interference, and invitation to sexual touching involving a child victim aged 12–13.

The offender lured the victim to his home under the pretext of visiting his daughter, exposed her to pornography, used a knife to intimidate her, compelled her to remove her clothing and dance, and sexually touched her.

The court emphasized denunciation and deterrence, citing the vulnerability of the child victim, the use of a weapon, and the offender’s breach of trust as aggravating factors.

The offender also had prior convictions for multiple sexual offences against minors.

Applying the Kienapple principle, the court stayed the sexual interference conviction and imposed custodial sentences on the remaining counts.

In a homicide prosecution, the Crown sought to introduce several hearsay statements attributed to a deceased victim and to unidentified bystanders during a fight.

The court considered whether the statements fell within the res gestae exception to the hearsay rule and whether they satisfied reliability requirements under the principled approach articulated in R. v. Khelawon.

The court admitted a statement reported by a witness that the victim said “Budja stabbed me” and described others holding him down, finding it spontaneous and proximate to the startling event and not so unreliable as to warrant exclusion.

However, statements allegedly shouted by unidentified bystanders during the fight were ruled inadmissible for the truth of their contents because the declarants were unknown and reliability could not be assessed.

Those statements were admissible only for the non-hearsay purpose of demonstrating what may have been audible to the accused during the altercation.