Chloé* was 15 years old, had run away from a youth center and was kidnapped by pimps who forced her into prostitution. Desperate, she asked one of her clients to call the police, explaining the situation.
Posted at 12:53 p.m.
But Alexandre Woitiuk Bessette, who was celebrating his birthday that evening, chose instead to have sex with her, in the company of his spouse at the time, before abandoning him to his fate.
On Tuesday at the Montreal courthouse, the Crown demanded that Woitiuk Bessette be jailed for seven years after he was found guilty last fall of obtaining paid sexual services from a minor and sexually assaulting a child. a person under the age of 16 with the help of a third party.
“He knows that she is under the yoke of pimps, he knows her age, he knows her dependency situation, she is a runaway,” underlined the Crown prosecutor, Pierre-Olivier Bolduc, during his argument on the sentence to impose on the 30-year-old man.
“It’s nothing more than a kidnapping situation that he’s dealing with, and he’s choosing not to help a teenage girl who is clearly in need. He knows his psychological distress. She asks for help. He makes the conscious, thoughtful and planned choice to have sex with her, together, for her party. »
According to Mand Bolduc, these are aggravating factors which militate in favor of the imposition of a sentence of seven years, two years more than the minimum sentence of five years for the crime of group sexual assault on a minor .
The facts occurred in 2018. After waiting in vain for help that night, Chloé managed to escape her pimps, and the investigation made it possible to trace Woitiuk Bessette.
According to the defendant’s lawyer, Mr.and Serge Lamontagne, a five-year sentence would be sufficient in the circumstances, given Woitiuk Bessette’s lack of a history of sex crimes.
Earlier, M.and Bolduc had read a victim impact statement, in which Chloe explained that the episode had caused her great psychological distress, to the point where she began to self-harm and take increasingly powerful drugs. She also said that she was very suspicious of everyone, so she refused to send her baby to daycare.
He pleads ignorance
Even though he was found guilty, the man continued to claim he had no idea Chloe was 15.
“When I found out that the victim was a minor, it disturbed me, traumatized me and I felt disgusting,” said Alexandre Woitiuk Bessette, addressing the court from the dock on Tuesday. “I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. »
If the young girl had given him the note in which she asked for help, “we would have been heroes and not rapists,” he said.
He said he went to confession to a priest, who told him that he had not committed any sin and that he only had to ask God for forgiveness.
Judge Yves Paradis will hand down his sentence against Woitiuk Bessette on March 24.
In that case, in September 2019, pimp Tatiana Isabel Sanchez, who was then 19, pleaded guilty to one charge of human trafficking and to counts of pimping, assault with a weapon and drug trafficking. She had been sentenced to four years in prison, but now had 16 months left to serve.
Kadeem Noël, alias White JJ, who faced several charges of human trafficking and pimping in this case, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison.
*Name changed to protect the identity of the victim.
With Louis-Samuel Perron