WARNING: This story contains graphic details some may find disturbing.
Leaving her seat in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court in St. John’s Wednesday afternoon, the woman gave a deep sigh.
Before she walked to the front of the room to address the court, the woman sitting next to her — another one of the five people Chris Snow repeatedly sexually abused when they were children in the 1960s and 1970s — whispered words of encouragement.
“Stay strong,” she said.
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On the stand, the woman read hurriedly from a piece of paper.
“I’ve had difficulties in every relationship I’ve had,” she told Justice William Goodridge. “I cocoon myself into the blankets, not to be touched when I’m asleep.
“I have a lot of anger towards Chris and a lot of anxiety when I see him. When people would say Chris was nice, I struggled with not saying, ‘If they only knew.’”
Snow, 68, made no movement in the dock as the woman, in a wavering voice, continued.
“I’ve realized I am stronger than everything that happened to me,” she said. “It gave me the knowledge to raise a strong, healthy family.”
And then, looking directly at Snow for the first time and in a louder voice, she gave her final statement: “I’ve got my power back.”
Once she returned to her seat, another of the women took her turn on the stand. She told the court she, too, had experienced challenges in intimate relationships, and never really let people get close to her. She wouldn’t go to sleepovers as a child, she said, because she was afraid she might wet the bed and people would figure out she was being sexually abused. She spoke of her grades slipping and of dropping out of school in Grade 10, later returning to finish her studies.
“I never felt I could confide in anyone,” she said. “It made me live in a shell.”
The woman said she wonders if her relationship with her children would have been different, less distant, had Snow not abused her when she was a child.
“I wonder if I will ever feel complete as a woman, as a wife, as a person,” she said.
Snow wiped tears from his eyes as the woman spoke.
Goodridge praised the women for having the strength to read their own victim impact statements aloud, saying it gave the words more weight.
“It takes courage to come and do that, and I appreciate you did it,” the judge said.
When it was Snow’s turn to address the court, he didn’t say much. Wiping away more tears, he told the judge he accepted he’d have to do jail time.
Crown prosecutor Tannis King suggested a prison sentence of between 12 and 15 years for Snow, referring to the gravity and intrusiveness of his crimes.
Defence lawyer Jason Edwards argued for a period of six-and-a-half to nine years behind bars, pointing to Snow’s own troubled childhood. Snow’s parents had been abusive, Edwards said, and Snow had been taken out of school in Grade 2, leaving him illiterate.
Snow is well known to many in the St. John’s area as the driver of the “Christmas Truck,” since he’d often drive around town in a pickup decorated with coloured lights and tree boughs, and blaring music.
Between 1965, when Snow was 18, and 1976, Snow snuck into the children’s bedrooms, fondling them in their beds while also fondling himself, and would sometimes leave them money. He tried to force the boys’ mouths and hands onto his genitals, and attempted to anally penetrate one of them a number of times, starting when the boy was nine. In one incident, Snow locked a boy in a closet until he agreed to his demands. In another, Snow got into bed and fondled a 16-year-old girl when she was five months’ pregnant.
The abuse happened on a near-daily basis, and the youngest victim was six years old.
When he convicted Snow in October, Goodridge called the case tragic and one of the worst he had ever heard as a judge.
Snow, who is a father and a grandfather, worked for the past number of years as a handyman and independent garbage collector. His son, David Snow, 35, is also facing child sexual abuse charges, in unrelated incidents said to have happened between 2011 and 2015. David Snow has been charged with two counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual interference, three counts of exposing his genitals to a child under 16, 10 counts of observing a person for a sexual purpose and one count each of making child pornography and possessing child pornography. David Snow, who has not been convicted, is also in custody, and his case is making its way through the court system.
Goodridge will bring down his sentence for Chris Snow next Wednesday.
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
