A young pimp was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in prison for forcing a teenage girl into prostitution in a Montreal hotel for days in August 2019.
Posted at 3:45 p.m
Benjamin Dion, who was 18 at the time of the events and is now 22, must therefore serve at least another 5 years and almost two months in a remand prison after the court accepted a joint proposal by the Crown and the defense , Tuesday in Montreal Courthouse.
In December 2021, a 17-year-old girl, now an adult, reported in shock testimony read in court that she had endured real ordeal two years earlier.
The victim reported being repeatedly raped by Benjamin Dion and his accomplice Steve Bédard. The teenager, who had been targeted with an arrest warrant for refusing to testify, had been subjected to a series of sordid sexual abuse, including the use of a gun. “Steve offered a lot of money. He wanted to buy me dearly, $5,000, $10,000. I would have worked when he wanted, how he wanted,” she told police in video testimony presented at the two men’s trial.
In particular, she had found herself confiscated in a hotel in Montreal, where she had to repeatedly prostitute herself. ” At the hotel, [Steve Bédard] said to me, ‘You won’t get out of there until Saturday. You do your shift,'” she told police. “It’s a confiscation because he wouldn’t let me out,” she added in her statement.
Benjamin Dion was initially released after his initial hearings before being jailed after being found guilty by the court more than a year ago. He has been imprisoned since then and has already served approximately a year and 10 months in prison. “So, minus preventive detention, he still has 5 years, 1 month and 19 days to serve,” QC Attorney Me Antonio Parapuf confirmed on Tuesday.
Proceedings to continue in March
Steve Bédard was in his early twenties at the time of the events. He is scheduled to appear in court again on March 20. He expressed the wish to conduct an investigation into the unconstitutionality of minimum sentences. In concrete terms, this means that he wants to declare certain charges against him unconstitutional in order to receive a lesser sentence.
It was videos posted by the two men on social media showing the teenage girl in trouble that allowed police to extradite her. The victim was eventually nearly saved by the SPVM’s tactical intervention group. “He wanted to take me to Edmonton,” she said about Steve Bédard in particular.
At the hotel, the police had arrested the two men and also confiscated handcuffs and a fake firearm. Earlier in the trial, Steve Bédard and Benjamin Dion pleaded guilty to possession, production and distribution of child pornography and an advertising charge for offering sexual services in the case of Benjamin Dion.
With Louis-Samuel Perron, La Presse