WINNIPEG — An appeals court in Manitoba has sided with two brothers who argued that their youth sentences for cyberbullying a teenage girl were too long.
The brothers, who were both 17 at the time of the offences back in 2013, admitted to threatening a 14-year-old girl in their community over the Internet into sending nude and explicit photos of herself.
They then distributed the pictures through social media.
They were sentenced last December to a three-year combined sentence of 16 months jail, eight months community supervision and 12 months probation, but they appealed on the grounds that the sentence exceeded the maximum allowed in the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Appeals court justice Diana Cameron said in the ruling that youth sentences for a single offence of the type committed by the brothers cannot exceed two years.
The court reduced the sentences to 12 months in jail, six months community supervision and six months probation.
"Unfortunately, in his determination of the ultimate sentence, the sentencing judge was under a misapprehension that the maximum concurrent sentence available per offence was three years," Cameron wrote in the ruling released earlier this month.
The brothers were arrested in May 2014 and pleaded guilty to four charges including sexual touching and possession and distribution of child pornography.
The trial judge in the case called the attack "relentless" and said it was designed to "exploit, demean and humiliate" the victim.
Judge Donald Slough said a friend of the brothers met the girl on Facebook, and that the man told the victim to send him nude pictures or "he would do something to her."
When she sent him a picture of her exposed breasts, the man demanded she send more explicit pictures or he would send her nude picture to everyone in the community, Slough said. She complied.
The brothers found out about the pictures and started harassing the victim and demanding progressively more explicit images, Slough said, which they then distributed through social media.
The victim's parents discovered the abuse after noticing a change in their daughter's behaviour and went to police.
