16-year conviction upheld for father who sexually abused young daughter

Alberta's top court has upheld the conviction of a Calgary man sentenced to 16 years in prison for brutally sexually abusing his young daughter.

In a unanimous ruling, a three-member Alberta Court of Appeal panel agreed with Crown prosecutor Julie Morgan that Justice Bruce Millar properly convicted the offender, who can't be named to protect his victim's identity.

Defence lawyer Efrayim Moldofsky had argued Millar showed bias toward his client and erred in not staying the prosecution because of unreasonable delay.

But the appeal judges said there was nothing on the record that showed the offender was the victim of bias by the judge and agreed there was no Charter breach for delay.

They said the argument of bias was simply an effort to re-argue the case before them, instead of providing an adequate reason to find Millar acted improperly.

“Overall, when viewed with the benefit of the entire record, (the appellant's) arguments in support of the first ground of appeal represent nothing more than a thinly veiled effort to convince the panel to reconsider the evidence and make different credibility assessments contrary to the standard of review and the role of this court,” they said.

The appeal judges refuted suggestions that Millar had erred in finding that the father committed multiple different acts of sexual degradation against his daughter over a period of 21/2 years when she was between two and four years old.

“The child, in her second interview, expressly stated all of these things and it was open to the trial judge to accept her evidence,” they said in a written decision released Thursday.

As far as unreasonable delay, the appeal court said, Millar correctly attributed much of the lengthy period it took to prosecute the father to factors beyond the Crown's control.

Millar ruled less than 27 months of the more than five and a half years it took to complete the offender's trial was attributable to the prosecution.

Under the Supreme Court's socalled Jordan rule, a period of 30 months or more is presumed to be an unreasonable delay in violation of a person's right to be tried in a reasonable amount of time.

The man sexually abused his daughter from December 2009 to May 2012.

The abuse included sexual intercourse with the girl and forcing her to perform oral sex, sometimes while her older brother was locked in another room, Millar found.

“The victim's older brother heard the victim crying while she was being sexually abused,” sad Millar.

“These are major sexual assaults committed on numerous occasions and amount to physical and psychological harm committed against her and her brother,” he said.

“The repeated sexual abuse of a child by a parent is a crime like no other ... The defendant abused a trust.”

The father has also appealed the 16-year sentence Millar handed him in October 2018.