He was a successful medical professional and devoutly religious man who had never sipped a cup of coffee, let alone quaff a beer or puff on a joint, before 2020.
But then came the pandemic and a downward spiral into addiction, personal decay and mental illness that four years later landed him in a Winnipeg courtroom charged with sexually violating his young son.
The man, known by his initials T.A., “was an upstanding member of the community whose history would not have suggested he would be capable of this offence,” King’s Bench Justice Shawn Greenberg wrote in a decision released this week in which she sentenced him to two years in custody.
“While (his) mental health is not an excuse for his actions, it explains them,” Greenberg said. “In my view it would be an error not to find it reduces his moral culpability to some extent.”
The man cannot be identified by name as it would identify his son.
The man pleaded guilty to one count of sexual interference. Court was told the man was separated from his wife in 2022 when during a sleepover at his home he masturbated his young son with a vibrator. The man said he was high on drugs at the time and claimed he was trying to teach the boy that masturbation was OK, as he had been raised in a strict religious household where it was forbidden.
“He had no criminal record at the time of the incident,” Greenberg said. “In fact, he led a productive and exemplary life… He was a law-abiding, devout member of (his church)… all that changed during the COVID pandemic.”
The man had a thriving professional practice until the pandemic hit, and then after a few months at home something “snapped” in him, according to his wife, court was told.
The man asked his wife to “open the marriage.” He started meeting women online and was introduced to alcohol and drugs. According to a psychiatric report provided to court, between 2020 and 2022, the man ingested a staggering amount of psychedelic drugs, including 840 doses of magic mushrooms, 600 tabs of acid, 300 doses of ketamine and 300 doses of MDMA.
The psychiatric report by Dr. Jeffrey Waldman said the man’s drug intake caused him to develop substance-induced psychosis, including religious delusions, consistent with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
During the same time period, the man tattooed his entire torso with images of fire and religious symbolism.
“While tattoos are not normally an indication of anything untoward, in Mr. A’s case, they have been attributed to his psychosis and they are striking,” Greenberg said.
In 2023, the man was excommunicated from his church and suspended from practice due to his drug use and concerning social media posts.
The man was initially free on bail, but has been in custody since January after being convicted of uttering threats in a social media post prior to the assault on his son. While in custody, the man has been off drugs, but continues to require extensive mental health treatment, Waldman said.
Crown attorney Ben Wickstrom recommended Greenberg sentence the man to four years in prison, while defence lawyers Mike Cook and Emilie Cook urged her to consider a conditional sentence of two years or less served in the community.
Grenberg said case law did not support granting the man a conditional sentence. While the man’s psychosis and delusional thinking played a “significant role” in his crime, it was his choice to take the drugs, knowing what effects they were having on him, Greenberg said.
“The primary focus must be on denunciation and deterrence and a non-custodial sentence will not satisfy that objective,” she said.
Greenberg ordered that the man serve an additional three years of supervised probation and prohibited him from working in a position of trust with children under 16 for a period of 20 years.
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
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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