VANCOUVER — The judge in the sentencing hearing of a child serial rapist is grappling over allowing access to the man's computer that police say was full of child pornography.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice James Williams said the stakes are high for Ibata Hexamer and has called a hearing next week to determine the admissibility of the computer evidence in the sentencing process.
Hexamer pleaded guilty in 2013 to four counts of sexual assault and two counts of confinement involving six victims aged six to 14, one of which dates back to 20 years.
Prosecutors want Hexamer to be designated a long-term or dangerous offender for his crimes.
"If Crown succeeds in having Mr. Hexamer designated a dangerous offender the consequences for him are great," said Williams on Monday. "He could spend the rest of his life in prison."
Hexamer's lawyer, Gary Botting, said police should not have been allowed to access his client's computer, which allegedly contained thousands of images of child porn.
Williams took issue with Botting's decision to raise such objections so late in the process, after a forensic psychologist had already completed a psychiatric assessment. He called the move "an astounding proposition."
"I will say this quite pointedly: the manner in which the defence has dealt with this issue is unfortunate in the extreme," said Williams.
The sex assaults started in 1995 and ended in 2009, after Hexamer attacked a six-year-old girl in Surrey, B.C. He threatened to stab the little girl with a knife before forcing her 12-year-old brother and his 15-year-old friend to lay on the ground in the woods and look away while he sexually assaulted her.
Hexamer pleaded guilty in 2012 to six of the original 23 charges on the condition that the Crown drop the remaining 17, Botting said in an interview outside the court. He added that Hexamer bargained for a 15-year sentence and that prosecutors agreed not to pursue dangerous-offender status.
Botting said his client applied to change his guilty plea earlier this year and fired his previous lawyer, Donna Turco, after she allegedly accepted a deal without Hexamer's consent that didn't include the dangerous-offender condition.
In June, the judge dismissed Hexamer's bid to alter his plea.
Hexamer, who's in his 40s, is a former DJ and political campaign organizer, with experience working on a municipal election campaign in Vancouver and for the NDP in Vancouver-Centre for the 2006 federal election. He has cycled through five lawyers since his arrest in late 2010.
He remains in custody and his sentencing will continue on Oct. 8.
