A Lower Sackville man has been handed a 30-month prison sentence for sexually assaulting a woman he knew in September 2018.
But Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Peter Rosinski reduced Eric Albert Campbell's sentence by six months because of remand credit and time he spent on house arrest after getting bail.
The judge ordered that the remaining two years be served concurrently to a prison sentence Campbell received last August for sexually assaulting a different woman eight days before this offence.
The prison time will be followed by two years' probation.
Campbell, 32, pleaded guilty to the charge in December and was sentenced Friday in Halifax. The judge’s written decision was released Monday.
The victim’s identity is protected by a publication ban. According to an agreed statement of facts, she and Campbell met on the Plenty of Fish dating website in the spring of 2018.
The offence was committed at the woman’s residence on the morning of Sept. 16, 2018. During consensual vaginal intercourse, Campbell asked if he could have anal sex with her, and she responded “no.”
Campbell went ahead and performed the act without her consent.
“What are you doing?” the woman said afterward. “I asked you to stop. I said ‘no.’”
After Campbell left her residence, the woman sat on her couch and cried for several hours. A neighbour found her curled up on the couch that afternoon and described her as a “wreck in a human shell.”
The neighbour convinced the woman to go to the Cobequid Community Health Centre in Lower Sackville at about 4 p.m. – eight hours after the incident – and a sexual assault nurse examined her that evening.
Campbell phoned the woman 78 times over the next two days and sent her 43 text messages, but she did not reply.
He was arrested Sept. 19, 2018, and remained in custody for almost two months before he was granted bail.
Last summer, he was sentenced to two years in prison and three years’ probation after he was found guilty of the earlier sexual assault.
At the most recent sentencing, the Crown asked for three years in prison, to be served consecutively, while the defence argued for two years consecutive, followed by three years’ probation.
But Rosinski rejected both lawyers’ recommendations for consecutive time and made the sentence concurrent.
In his decision, the judge said the primary sentencing objectives had to be denunciation and deterrence.
“This offence occurred immediately after consensual activity, which suggests it was an impulsive rather than premeditated decision by Mr. Campbell,” Rosinski said.
He said the victim continues to feel the impact of the sexual assault more than two years later. She told the court the crime shook her sense of security and her confidence in her own judgment and prevented her from attempting to have fresh relationships.
“Such sexual assaults are a very personal violation – not just physically … but also the lasting psychological harm that manifested itself in the various ways she described,” the judge said.
But he said one cannot lose sight of rehabilitation, “and in Mr. Campbell’s case, there is a real prospect of rehabilitation.”
The judge said Campbell, a father of two, had a traumatic childhood and has struggled with addictions to alcohol and crack cocaine since he was a teenager. He said he was satisfied substance abuse played a role in Campbell’s recent convictions.
Campbell has responded favourably to treatment and counselling since 2018, Rosinski said, and has “conducted himself positively” within the prison environment at the Springhill Institution since August 2020.
The judge ordered Campbell to have no contact with the victim while he’s in prison or on probation and placed him on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life.
Campbell is prohibited from possessing firearms for 10 years after he gets out of prison and also had to provide a DNA sample for a national databank.
