Whitehorse man sentenced for coercing minor into sexual act in exchange for crack cocaine

WARNING: This article contains details of sexual assault.

A Whitehorse man who coerced a 15-year-old girl to perform a sexual act on him in exchange for crack cocaine will spend an additional six months in jail. 

Patrick Parker, 32, was found guilty in October of sexual interference, obtaining sexual services for consideration from a person under 18 and sexual assault following a judge-alone trial. 

Yukon territorial court judge John Phelps handed Parker a three-year-and-one-month sentence earlier this month, but gave him just more than two-and-a-half years of credit for the time he'd already spent in jail. His incarceration will be followed by 18 months' probation. 

The charges date back to February 2020, when Parker met with the victim in downtown Whitehorse. 

In his decision issued after the trial, Phelps wrote that the victim testified that she was living in a hotel room with a roommate at the time and addicted to crack cocaine. 

Her name is covered by a publication ban. 

One night, when the victim went to the washroom, her roommate used her phone to text Parker and, pretending to be her, offered to perform oral sex in exchange for approximately $150-worth of crack. 

Parker accepted the offer and the victim initially decided to go through with the exchange. She met Parker by the train station near the River View Hotel and walked to "a little blue building" surrounded by a fence "in a secluded area near the river," Phelps wrote. 

The victim and Parker went into the fenced area. The victim testified that she was nervous, "realized that she had made a mistake" and told Parker she didn't want to go through with the deal. However, Parker blocked her from leaving and told her she couldn't leave until he "finished," after which she "did as he asked."  

At trial, Parker claimed that he had never met the victim and had no involvement with drugs. Phelps found his testimony unreliable and not to be trusted. 

Crown Neil Thomson, at Parker's sentencing hearing, asked that Parker receive a four-year-long sentence, arguing that there were no mitigating factors in the case. There were, however, a number of aggravating factors, he noted, including Parker's criminal record, the particular vulnerability of the victim and the circumstances of the sexual assault. 

"This is a serious offence — the moral blameworthiness is high," Thomson said. 

Defence lawyer Kevin MacGillivray, meanwhile, asked that Parker only serve 60 more days followed by a year of probation, arguing that, with consideration for the time he's already spent in custody, the sentence would be the equivalent of two years and nine months.