A Prince George man was found guilty Wednesday of sexually exploiting a teenage girl.
The man, whose name cannot be printed under a court-ordered publication ban against information identifying the victim, was also found guilty of seven other charges related to a two-year relationship that began when he was 27 years old and she was 15 years old.
In a decision, Prince George provincial court judge Shannon Keyes found the man began to supply her with methamphetamine for free.
After a couple of months, she was apparently addicted to the drug and a sexual relationship began.
The man gave her the drug on a daily basis as a way to shame her into staying with him rather than returning to the group home where she had been living.
When that didn't work, he resorted to force, the court heard.
"It seems to me that a relationship in which an adult man engages in a sexual relationship with an adolescent female after initiating a friendship in which he supplies her with free, illegal drugs which creates or aids in her addiction and then repeatedly assaults her to prevent her from leaving the relationship must be a relationship of exploitation," Keyes said. "It seems to me that this is the very sort of evil that Parliament is seeking to address with this section of the Criminal Code."
During a trial, the man had maintained he thought the teenage girl was 19 years old.
But Keyes found he should have known she was younger by the fact that she was living in a group home.
She said the victim, who often ran away from the group home, had been "raised in [state] care from birth, had no family supports and was a marginalized person with intellectual deficits."
The man was also found guilty of one count each of assault, assault with a weapon, sexual interference of a person under 16 years old, unlawful confinement, and two counts of breach of probation.
Sentencing will occur once a pre-sentence report with risk assessments has been completed.
