A man who sexually abused eight random women on the streets of Montreal wants to serve his sentence from the comfort of his home.
Posted at 2:38pm
Sobhi Akra, 39, surprised all of his victims from behind while some wore headphones. He grabbed her breasts or her genitals. The attacks took place between October 2017 and November 2018.
So the man slipped his hand under the skirt of the school uniform of a 17-year-old girl who went to school. He also touched a woman’s buttocks and genitals and said, “You are so sexy, I want to please you.” He attacked a victim waiting for the train on a platform and a woman returning from the gym. Two of the victims are minors. Each time the man fled after the attacks.
Sobhi Akra pleaded guilty to five counts of sexual assault and three counts of attempted sexual assault in January 2022, but the man is still awaiting sentencing. The Crown demanded 22 months in prison last fall. Instead, the defense asked for a six-month prison sentence in order not to damage the man’s immigration application and thus avoid deportation to his country of origin, Lebanon.
However, Judge Alexandre St-Onge on Tuesday asked the two parties to comment on Bill C-5, which was passed last June. Specifically, this federal statute allows for the imposition of an at-home sentence on a sex offender.
Sobhi Akra is already eligible for a suspended sentence, but his lawyer, Me Réginal Victorin, took the opportunity to encourage the judge to rule in favor of that option. “What I think C-5 changes is that the conditional clause is no longer an exceptional measure. It needs to be encouraged,” he pleaded outside the Montreal courthouse. An interpreter translated the words of the lawyers and the judge into Arabic for Sohbi Akra.
“The legislature will encourage suspended sentence (house arrest) because it is a measure that promotes recovery,” Me Victorin added.
What Carolyne Paquin pounded on me was that punishment should be proportionate to the seriousness of the crime. She also stressed that the verdict must uphold the relationship of trust between the public and the judiciary. ” [On parle de] someone who, over a period of one year, performed intrusive acts in relation to eight vulnerable women who did not require the Lord to commit such acts on their person,” she told the judge.
“We have requested 22 months imprisonment,” Me Paquin told journalists as he left the court. Passing Bill C-5 doesn’t change anything for us. We stand by the position that we had already formulated in court. »
The judge will announce his decision in early April.
Federal Attorney General David Lametti had to defend Bill C-5 just two weeks ago after a sex offender was sentenced to 20 months in prison, to be served in the community, outside the Montreal courthouse.
Jonathan Gravel, 42, penetrated a woman’s anus without warning in 2014, despite her cries of denial. The man was convicted in 2018 but has pursued appeals. If he had received his sentence slightly earlier, before Bill C-5 was passed, he would not have been eligible for house arrest.
Remember that conditional sentences for sexual assault were abolished by the Conservatives in 2007.