A former Buddhist monk convicted of sexually abusing two young girls has had his 11-year prison sentence reduced by 18 months after being diagnosed with brain cancer.
Southone Silaphet, 76, was convicted after trial in 2021 of two counts of sexual interference.
Silaphet abused the two victims between 2016 and 2019 during visits to the Wat Lao Xayaram temple on Sinclair Street, where he had been head monk for more than 12 years.
In a written decision last week, Manitoba’s Court of Appeal ruled Silaphet’s cancer diagnosis amounted to “fresh evidence” that rendered the original sentence unfit.
“I accept that the evidence of the accused’s serious medical condition could reasonably have affected the sentence imposed by the trial judge,” Justice Karen Simonsen wrote on behalf of the Appeal Court.
The trial judge “sentenced the accused on the basis that he had no health issues. He now clearly does.”
Court was provided no evidence of Silaphet’s prognosis or life expectancy, only that he was unable to engage in physically strenuous activity, Simonsen said.
“Despite the limitations of the fresh evidence, I can infer that, with the accused’s serious diagnosis of metastatic cancer, he will suffer hardship while in custody as compared to an offender without such a condition,” she said.
Silaphet appealed his conviction, arguing the trial judge did not properly assess the evidence of the two young victims or Silaphet’s own testimony. That appeal was dismissed.
“I am not persuaded that the trial judge unevenly scrutinized the evidence,” Simonsen said.
Court heard evidence at trial Silaphet told one girl his acts of molestation would keep the spirit of her dead grandmother alive.
Silaphet was arrested in 2019 after the girl told her school guidance counsellor she had been sexually abused. The abuse, which included kissing, fondling underneath her clothes and biting, had happened “for as long as I really remember” the girl told an investigator in a police video statement provided to court at trial.
Silaphet, who lived at the temple, a converted fire hall, abused the girl in an upstairs office equipped with security cameras that allowed him to see people coming up the stairs, the girl said.
On one occasion, the girl said, Silaphet saw a man walking up the stairs and made the girl hide in a closet until he had left.
A second preteen victim said Silaphet repeatedly touched her under her clothing “in wrong places” while the two were alone in his upstairs office.
“He would tell my mom that he just wanted us to pray, even though it wouldn’t be praying,” the girl said in a separate police video interview.
Silaphet testified at trial with the help of a Laotian interpreter and flatly denied abusing the girls, saying he was never alone with them for more than a few minutes.
Provincial court Judge Stacey Cawley rejected his testimony as self-serving, saying it “appeared tailored to minimize the contact he had with the complainants and the degree of his favouritism.”
dean.pritchard@freepress.com
Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter
Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.
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