At sentence hearing, victim’s mother calls the two days her daughter was missing in February 2021 a “nightmare.”
The mother of a 15-year-old girl abducted by her biological father in Montreal three years ago and kept in a crawl space while police searched for her described the ordeal as a nightmare in court on Tuesday.
While delivering a victim-impact statement before Quebec Court Judge Nathalie Duchesneau at the Montreal courthouse, the mother said that years ago, her daughter received an autism diagnosis and has the mental capacity of an eight-year-old.
Duchesneau began hearing sentencing arguments Tuesday after the 47-year-old father avoided a five-day trial by pleading guilty on Dec. 4 to taking a person under the age of 16 out of the possession of their parent and to another charge related to how he lied to the Montreal police while they searched for the girl over the course of two days in February 2021.
Prosecutor Jessica Drolet said the Crown will seek a 42-month prison term while defence lawyer Walter Stirling said he is seeking a sentence the father can serve in the community. Sentencing arguments will continue in December.
The man, whose name cannot be published because of a standard publication ban intended to protect the minor girl’s identity, had been divorced from the victim’s mother for years. The teen contacted him through social media after she became upset over being placed in youth protection out of concerns for her safety. The mother has sole custody of the girl.
On the afternoon of Feb. 19, 2021, the girl did not return to a youth protection centre after school and her social workers called 911. A little more than two hours later, two Montreal police officers visited the father’s home in the West Island to ask if he had seen her. According to a joint statement of facts filed in the case, the father told the police he did not know where she was.
The following day just before 6 a.m., police officers returned to his home and he changed his story. The father lied again and said he had dropped her off at her youth protection centre at 2 p.m. the day before.
Later that same day, police sent information to the media in the hopes of locating the girl. Five hours later, someone who saw a report about the disappearance called 911 and reported seeing the girl at a home in Montreal earlier the same day. The woman added that the girl’s hair had been dyed red.
When the police went to the home in Montreal where the woman had seen the girl, they were greeted by a man who is related to her. He yelled at the officers and refused to let them inside. The officers could see the girl through the front door to the home. She appeared calm and let the officers in through a back door. The man who refused to let the police in was initially charged with the father, but the case was eventually dropped.
Days later, the girl’s mother filed a report that her daughter had been abducted. She reported to police that the girl’s father sent messages to the girl’s social media account pretending she had run away and telling her to “please go home.”
The girl also gave a statement to police and said her father picked her up after school on the day in question. She said that as they were driving away her father told her: “I am technically kidnapping you.” He then left her off at the home of the relative where she was ultimately found. While she was there, her uncle called the relative and told him the police had paid him a visit. She said the uncle instructed the relative to hide the girl in a small crawl space, which could be accessed through a basement closet, in case the police showed up.
The girl estimated she spent two hours in the tiny space before she complained and her relative let her sleep on his couch. She also said her relative mentioned the possibility of holding her for $75,000 in ransom.
On Tuesday, the mother said she is certain her ex-husband took their daughter in as revenge for the wife leaving him more than a dozen years ago.
“I got the call that no parent wants to receive: ‘Your child is missing,’” the mother told the judge.
She described the stress she suffered upon learning her daughter had gone missing and how the police investigation included a late-night search of the home where the teenager’s teacher lived. The teacher’s four young children were roused from their sleep while the search was carried out.
“The whole time (he) knew where (she) was,” the mother said. “My whole life as I knew it ended. Now that I have seen the photos and videos (of the crawl space), it was like a nightmare.”