WINNIPEG — A teenaged boy has been sentenced to three years for violently attacking a girl in a case that helped push the Manitoba government to stop placing foster children in hotel rooms.
The boy, who can't be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is to serve two years in secure custody, six months in open custody and six months under supervision in the community.
Court heard he was 15 when he attacked the 16-year-old girl in a Winnipeg parkade on April 1, 2015.
Both teens were in the care of Child and Family Services and had been placed in the same downtown hotel.
After an evening of heavy drinking, they went to the parkade and had consensual sex. But the boy got angry with himself for cheating on his girlfriend and turned on the victim, continuing to beat her even after she lost consciousness.
The girl was taken to hospital in critical condition and her family said at the time that she wasn't expected to survive. Court heard she has suffered permanent brain damage and will never be able to live on her own.
"There was ongoing trauma — psychological and physical — to the victim," and she will suffer the rest of her life, said provincial court Judge Wanda Garreck.
She asked the boy if he had anything to say and he shook his head.
"There was no one who egged you on or encouraged you or anyone that provoked you to commit this offence," Garreck told the youth. "You committed it in a rage against your own circumstances."
The province had been criticized for more than a decade for housing foster children in hotels due to a chronic shortage of foster-care spaces.
The government had already promised to phase out hotel placements when the attack happened. Shortly after, officials set a firm deadline to end the practice by June 1, 2015.
The boy — diagnosed with intellectual disabilities, attachment disorder and a milder form of fetal alcohol syndrome — earlier pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault. The Crown had asked that he be sentenced as an adult, but the judge ruled against it.
Garreck agreed with recommendations for a "intensive rehabilitative" sentence that will allow the teen to receive individualized treatment from a psychologist, an occupational therapist and a tutor.
The judge noted that the boy "has done well overall" during his 15 months in custody at the Manitoba Youth Centre, particularly since his medications were changed and he started one-on-one therapy.
