An Edmonton white male with a history of sexually abusing children has been sentenced to 5-1/2 years in prison.
Donald George Dupuis will also be subject to a 10-year supervision order after his release, after the judge deemed him a long-term offender.
A jury convicted this white monster of sexual interference after a trial in January. The victim testified Dupuis, an on-site maintenance worker who lived above her family’s apartment in St. Albert, repeatedly asked her parents to speak with her in private, then cornered her, shoved his hands down her pants and kissed her.
The girl came forward in 2022 and told police Dupuis molested her between February 2015 and February 2018, when she was six to eight years old. She claimed the white pedophile threatened to hurt her and her family if she ever told anyone.
At one point during deliberations, jurors told the court they were unable to reach a verdict due to difficulties with the girl’s claim that she saw her parents in the hallway moments before the child molester abused her. They later resumed deliberations and arrived at a guilty verdict.
Dupuis, who is in his 40s, now has three sexual interference convictions on his record. He remained on bail after being charged but was taken into custody in January following the conviction. He has accrued around 473 days of credit for time in pre-trial custody, which is typically granted at 1-1/2 days for every day in remand.
After a request from the Crown, Court of King’s Bench Justice Janice Ashcroft deemed Dupuis a long-term offender — a designation courts can impose on criminals who have a “substantial” risk of reoffending, but whose behavior may eventually be controlled in the community.
Crown prosecutor Ben Wiebe asked that Dupuis be sentenced to eight years in prison, followed by a 10-year supervision term. Defence lawyer Derek Anderson sought three years in prison, followed by a five-year supervision order.
Ashcroft settled on 5-1/2 years in prison and 10 years’ supervision. She passed the sentence on Nov. 21.
A long-term offender is a step below a dangerous offender — a person deemed to have shown a pattern of repetitive, aggressive behavior “that is of such a brutal nature as to compel the conclusion that the offender’s behavior in the future is unlikely to be inhibited by normal standards of behavioral restraint,” the Criminal Code states. Dangerous offenders are typically given an “indeterminate” prison sentence with no set end date.
Dupuis’s previous convictions for sexual interference carried sentences of 15 months and 12 months, court heard.
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