A Takla Landing man was sentenced Thursday to 18 months in jail and two years probation for sexually assaulting a woman in the community 180 kilometres north of Fort St. James.
Paul George French, 52, was issued the term for a 2013 incident that began, according to the findings of Prince George provincial court judge Shannon Keyes, when he came across the woman as she was walking home, heavily intoxicated by alcohol and feeling suicidal.
French attempted to calm her down before she went home by herself.
The woman, who cannot be named under a court-ordered publication ban, then called her parents to say she was contemplating suicide.
In turn, her parents called RCMP and both groups made their way over to the woman's home. In the interim, French called her and she agreed he could come over for a coffee.
When he arrived, they each had a cup but, still feeling the effects from the alcohol, the woman fell asleep.
She awoke to find one of French's hands down her pants.
At about that time, her parents arrived at the door.
French let the parents in but only after they spent some time knocking on the door.
He told them he had rescued the woman from trying to hang herself and left immediately. Police subsequently found no signs consistent with the story and the woman complained to officers about his behaviour.
When questioned by police, French initially stuck to his story but eventually admitted to the act. But French pleaded guilty only after two witnesses testified at a subsequent trial, although before the victim had to take the stand.
French has been convicted of the crime twice before, both offences committed in 1986 in Takla Landing and involving two girls who had been sleeping.
Keyes disagreed with a forensic psychiatrist's conclusion that French's risk of reoffending is low and found the three years probation with a suspended sentence French was issued for the two previous offences has had no effect.
She found French continues to downplay and deny his behaviour.
"Mr. French, while entirely sober, insinuated himself into a young woman's own home after he discovered her extremely intoxicated and distraught to the point of expressing suicidal intentions," Keyes said.
"I am of the view that his story of rescuing the woman from suicide is a self-aggrandizing fabrication likely invented, at first, to explain his presence in (the woman's) home and to explain why he did not answer the door when the woman's parents arrived, and later when they entered, to pass himself off as the hero instead of the villain.
"Whatever his reasons, the fact that he has maintained this story is evidence to me that he has no insight whatsoever into the gravity of his violation of the victim's personal integrity."
