A 68-year-old man whose sexual offences against children spanned two generations in his own family has been sent to jail for 20 months by a North Vancouver provincial court judge.
Judge John Milne handed the former West Vancouver resident two consecutive six-month sentences for sexually assaulting his two adopted daughters numerous times throughout the 1980s.
The man also received an eight-month sentence – to be served consecutively – for sexually assaulting his granddaughter in a similar incident three decades later.
The sentences were handed down Feb. 25 after the man previously entered guilty pleas to three charges of sexual assault in North Vancouver provincial court.
The man cannot be named in order to protect the identities of his victims.
In a sentencing hearing this fall in North Vancouver provincial court, Crown counsel Adrienne Lee told the judge the childhoods and teenage years of the defendant’s two daughters – now both adults – had been “marred by this abuse,” which had left a “path of devastation” in the family.
Both women kept silent about the abuse for 30 years – until the man’s sexual abuse of his granddaughter prompted them to come forward.
Both of the daughters were sexually abused by their father from the time they were about four years old until they were into their teens.
The daughters blocked out thoughts of the abuse until a family visit to the man’s home three decades later revealed his sexual abuse of the granddaughter.
One of the adult daughters confronted her father with the impact of his actions at the sentencing hearing when she read her victim impact statement in court.
“You stole my childhood,” she said. “I lived with a big dark secret not knowing what was happening to me or who I could go to for help. You crossed a boundary no adult should ever cross.”
In a bizarre twist in the case, the man’s wife – a grandmother in her late 60s – was previously sentenced to six months’ house arrest for attempting to bribe her ex son-in-law to have the complaints dropped for $100,000.
The son-in-law refused, instead reporting the incident to police.
