A Montreal resident, who served as a high school psychoeducator, could be jailed for nearly two decades bringing an 8-year-old girl from Ivory Coast as a ‘sex slave.’
Now 60, Sylvain Villemaire sexually exploited her for three years and awaiting the verdict on him to be delivered on August 18.
He was earlier convicted in Montreal in February for a range of sexual offences, reports VICE World News which obtained court documents include distributing child pornography and human trafficking of a person under the age of 18.
At the time, Quebec Court Judge Pierre Labelle described the victim as “bought, sacrificed, and abandoned.”.
“The treatment she suffered at the hands of this man was nothing less than enslavement, since he used her like a puppet,” Labelle stated.
Villemaire pleaded guilty last year to all charges except human trafficking and distribution of child pornography.
This week Crown prosecutors called for him to face 18 years behind bars, while Villemaire asks for just two years.
How the horror unfolded
The girl travelled alone from Ivory Coast. Villemaire met her mother on a dating site and then in person in Ivory Coast. He showed interest in the girl’s education and promised to look after her until the three reunite in Canada.
The woman was supposed to join her in Canada, but despite several attempts between 2015 and 2018, that never happened.
The girl’s life turned into “a nightmare” just a few days after she arrived at Villemaire’s home in Canada, with the latter starting to sexually assault her up to four times a week.
Utter perversion
Villemaire asked her to penetrate him with a sex toy, the documents say, adding, he engaged in inappropriate touching, penetration, and sodomy.
In court, the girl testified that Villemaire ordered her to perform an unspecified sexual act on a woman that he was having sex with at the time.
After finishing cancer treatment in 2017, he asked the girl to “play doctor with him,” which involved sex toys.
Sold to him?
The attacks on her continued “with regularity” until he was arrested. He also tried to control the girl.
He told her that her mother had “sold” her to him and made her sign a contract. The accused was caught through a child sexual abuse investigation by the Montreal police in 2018.
A raid in Villemaire’s apartment in May that year turned up child abuse content and the contract signed by the girl. She was later placed into child protective services.
Crown Prosecutor Amélie Rivard told the court that Villemaire’s crimes “have an impact on her now, had an impact on her in the past, and will have a major impact on her in the future.” She said the girl feels betrayed by her mother and isn’t in contact with her biological family anymore.
Villemaire told the court that he was a “good man”. He is refusing psychiatric evaluation, although a psychologist believes he may meet the diagnosis of pedophilia as well as narcissistic and antisocial personality traits.
