A repeat child molester, whose case had been dragging through the courts for seven years, has just been declared a dangerous offender and sent to prison for an indefinite period.
Posted at 1:41 p.m.
Steve Hurdle was arrested in 2014 for sexually assaulting a five-year-old girl in the locker room of a public swimming pool in northern Montreal. He had lured the child into the men’s locker room, saying he wanted to help him put on his shoes.
By all sorts of means, he managed to drag out the legal process, but Judge Silvie Kovacevich, of the Court of Quebec, finally declared him a dangerous offender last Friday, at the Montreal courthouse.
This label, reserved for the worst criminals, means that the offender has repeatedly committed serious abuse and that he represents “a danger to the life, safety or physical or mental well-being” of others, according to the Criminal Code. The court can therefore sentence him to prison for an indefinite period.
In Hurdle’s case, the National Parole Board (NPB) will have to reassess whether he can be released every two years.
Several young children have fallen into the clutches of the 42-year-old sexual predator since the early 2000s. In Sherbrooke, in 2005, when he was released from prison for another story of sexual assault, he notably sexually assaulted a small three-year-old girl who escaped her mother’s supervision in a department store.
At his sentencing in 2007, Hurdle was declared a long-term offender for a seven-year term.
However, he found himself in court on several occasions for non-compliance with the conditions imposed on him.
“The Tribunal is convinced that an award, other than an indeterminate award, is unlikely to protect society against the risks of recidivism represented by [Steve Hurdle] “says Judge Kovacevich in her decision of February 11.
The magistrate mentions in particular the fact that Hurdle has a diagnosis of pedophilia, that he exhibits certain personality traits of a psychopath, that he does not respect the conditions imposed by the court or the NPB, that a psychologist has determined that he was at high risk of recurrence and was reluctant to participate in therapy.
During his testimony, in June 2021, Steve Hurdle had affirmed that his deviances were under control since he took Lupron, a drug which helped to reduce his “unbridled ideas” and his “deviant scenarios towards children”.
With the collaboration of Louis-Samuel Perron, The Press