A man who was convicted of molesting a three-year-old boy while he was working at a daycare in Verdun was sentenced on Wednesday to a 15-month prison term.
Quebec Court Judge Julie Riendeau delivered the sentence at the Montreal courthouse after approving a joint sentence recommendation made by lawyers from both sides in the case. The judge also sentenced Andrew Phillips, 26, to two years of probation and he will be listed on Canada’s sex-offender registry for 20 years.
After reporting the abuse to his parents and an aunt, the boy told a police investigator that Phillips, a part-time educator at the daycare, touched his penis while he was supposed to be taking his nap at the daycare. The victim estimated this happened about 30 times. In a videotaped statement, he told the investigator that Phillips would touch him every time he worked at the daycare. Before he was arrested in May 2013, Phillips had worked at the daycare for three years by replacing regular staff during summers and holidays.
Testimony from the daycare’s director and scheduling records established that Phillips was alone with the boy’s group while they napped in a room for 30 minutes on at least eight occasions during the summer of 2012.
During his trial last year, Phillips testified in his defence and denied what the boy alleged. He argued that he was never completely alone with the children he was responsible for and that, at all times, it was possible for someone to look into the classroom where they napped. On July 21, Riendeau found Phillips guilty on one count of sexual interference. She acquitted him on a related charge in June.
While approving the sentence recommendation, Riendeau noted that Phillips, a former resident of LaSalle who now lives in Toronto, had no criminal record and has no other cases pending. She said the sentence “addresses the nature and the frequency of the gestures the accused was found guilty of, the context of the abuse of authority and trust in which they occurred (and) the consequences on the victim.”
According to a written victim impact statement that was placed into the court record on Tuesday, the boy is doing well after having undergone psychotherapy but experienced stress during the trial, to a point where his hair started falling out. The boy also has difficulty trusting new adults he is introduced to, which has been a problem for him at school.
“I sincerely believe that he will never fully have confidence in an adult other than his parents, at least while he is a child,” one of the parents wrote in the statement. “His uncles, aunts and even his grandparents saw a marked difference in (him) before the abuse and after. He had become more distant and less trusting even though he knows them well.”
Phillips appeared somewhat nervous as he was taken into custody following Riendeau’s decision. However, it is possible that Phillips won’t be detained for long. His lawyer, Robert Israel, informed Riendeau that because he is appealing her decision to convict Phillips of sexual interference in July, he will immediately ask the Quebec Court of Appeal to have him released while the appeal is pending.
