Jean-Pierre Bellemare, 58, was declared a dangerous offender after being convicted of sexually assaulting two women in a Montreal halfway house.
A man who sexually assaulted two employees at a Montreal halfway house in eastern Montreal has been declared a dangerous offender for the second time in two years when he was sentenced at the Montreal courthouse Friday afternoon.
Superior Court Justice Daniel Royer called what Jean-Pierre Bellemare, 58, did on July 31, 2018, crimes “of exceptional brutality” and ruled it is not unconstitutional for an offender in Canada to be twice declared a dangerous offender.
Royer also decided Bellemare will have to serve at least 12 years behind bars before he is eligible for parole and the National Board Board can impose surveillance conditions on him for 10 years after the prison term expires.
On Nov. 16, 2022, at a courthouse in the Eastern Townships, a different Superior Court judge also declared Bellemare a dangerous offender. In that case, the judge sentenced Bellemare to an indefinite term.
On Friday, Royer repeated a few times it is clear Bellemare remains a high risk of reoffending.
“He minimizes the consequences of his actions,” Royer said. “He blames other people for his problems.”
On July 31, 2018, Bellemare entered the basement of a halfway house in eastern Montreal after 10 p.m. and used a gun to threaten and sexually assault two women who were working late that night. Before Bellemare left, he pepper-sprayed the two women directly in their eyes.
Bellemare was wearing a mask and he spoke English with an Italian accent, in an apparent effort to prevent him from being identified, but he didn’t use a condom and left his DNA on the clothing of one of the victims. The police were able to identify Bellemare through his DNA.
He had spent time at the halfway house during the fall of 2011, while he was serving a sentence for kidnapping the 13-year-old son of a police officer in Laval during 1986.
His trial before a jury began in March 2023 and, on April 13, 2023, he was found guilty of two counts each of armed sexual assault. He acted as his own lawyer during the trial and the jury heard testimony, from two Sûreté du Québec investigators, that Bellemare confessed to the crimes when he was interrogated.
On Sept. 19, 2018, only weeks after the sexual assaults at the halfway house, Bellemare and an accomplice named Jean-Guy Vallières kidnapped a 12-year-old girl while she was waiting at a bus stop on her way to school in Sutton, a town in the Eastern Townships. The girl was forced into a Dodge Caravan and one of the abductors assaulted her while the other man drove.
She was brought to a residence close to where she was abducted and was forced into the basement, where she was bound with duct tape. Bellemare used the girl’s cell phone to contact her mother, a bank employee, to make ransom demands of $100,000, but he needed wifi connections to make the calls. As the investigation into the kidnapping was continuing, investigators were able to watch video of Bellemare while he used the girl’s phone and connected to the free wifi at a fast food restaurant in Knowlton and then later at a business in Longueuil.
The girl managed to free herself from her restraints, escaped from the unoccupied house where she was held and walked home where the police found her.
Bellemare was arrested while trying to cross the border into the U.S. Vallières was arrested months later, in April 2019, while trying to make a getaway from a bank robbery in Montreal.
Bellemare did himself no favours during his dangerous offender hearing in the kidnapping case. He acted as his own lawyer and, at one point, said it was only a matter of time before he kills someone.
Vallières was declared a dangerous offender in July.
The kidnapping in Sutton was the second time in Bellemare’s long career as a criminal he abducted a child.
On April 16, 1986, Bellemare and an accomplice kidnapped the 13-year-old son of a police officer in Laval. They demanded $30,000 to release the boy, but they were arrested when they went to pick up what they thought would be the ransom money. In that case, the boy was held for 55 hours before he was released.
After he delivered the sentence, Royer remembered he wanted to tell Bellemare something. The judge said: “I did not completely give up on the chance I am giving you. I hope you will take it.”
Bellemare then thanked the judge.