MONTREAL - A Belgian man who has pleaded guilty to half a dozen sex-related charges involving a 13-year-old Montreal girl says he was driven by love.
Vincent Raphael Duval, 32, testified at his pre-sentencing hearing Thursday he knew his actions were illegal but that he couldn't set aside his feelings for the teen.
Duval has pleaded guilty to six charges including kidnapping, sexual interference, sexual touching and three counts of luring with a computer.
The Crown is seeking at least five years in prison for Duval, calling the case a unique one in Canadian legal history and unprecedented in terms of sentencing.
Prosecutor Nathalie Fafard told Quebec court Judge Jean-Pierre Bonin the court needs to send a message, not only to society but to the international community, that Duval's actions are unacceptable in Canada.
Fafard says there aren't any similar cases in Canadian legal annals. Most of the luring cases tried in Canada have involved undercover police officers posing as children, with no real victims.
Duval's lawyer, Jeffrey Boro, is calling for a sentence of 12 to 18 months.
"I don't see that this type of behaviour merits a five-year sentence," Boro said outside the courtroom.
"It does merit a punishment and the courts clearly indicate that."
He said Duval fell in love with someone he thought was older than 13 and that he followed his heart rather than his head when he found out her age.
"Parents have the right to feel that in their own homes, their kids are secure," Boro added.
"I'm not minimizing what he did, but 12 or 18 months in jail is a long time."
Duval told the court that a chance meeting on a social networking site morphed into an eight-month online romance.
About halfway into the courtship, the girl revealed she was 13 and not 26 as she'd led Duval to believe.
"We decided that we would wait until she was 18; it was a road she proposed," Duval said, adding he went as far as to consult a lawyer to see what charges he'd face if he continued to converse with her.
"But we got closer and closer and started to think about how we could be together."
That's when Duval decided to sell his possessions and move to Canada, despite his parents telling him that trouble awaited him there.
Duval said he has always dated older women and that he is not a pedophile or a sexual fiend.
"I'm not looking for little girls," he said.
Duval was arrested with the girl in a hotel room in a seedy neighbourhood near the Montreal bus terminus in the wee hours of June 14.
The pair were getting ready to start a new life in an Amish community in Ontario where they believed no one would question their relationship.
Fafard tabled a victim-impact statement from the girl's mother, as well as a Belgian police report and nearly 6,000 pages of correspondence between the two.
Fafard agreed there was a romantic link between the two and that the exchanges between the two indicate it was not a strictly sexual encounter.
But she said the fact remains the girl was a child.
"He was conscious of the consequences," Fafard said. "But to tell us today that he was in love with is fine to a point. But the day he found out she was 13 years old, it was up to him to stop."
Sentencing is scheduled for July 24.
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Article online since July 3rd 2008, 0:00
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