Alberta court more than doubles sentence in 1981 rape and robbery case
John Beausoleil's sentence rose from 3½ years to 7½ years after the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled the original judgment failed to address denunciation and deterrence.
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The Alberta Court of Appeal has more than doubled the sentence for an Ontario man convicted of the 1981 rape and robbery of an Edmonton woman.
In a decision released Thursday, July 2, a three-judge panel allowed the Crown's appeal, increasing John Beausoleil's sentence from 3½ years to a global sentence of 7½ years. Justices Jane Fagnan, Kevin Feth, and Tamara Friesen found the original sentence to be "demonstrably unfit" and said it failed to address sentencing principles of denunciation and deterrence.
Beausoleil, a 71-year-old from Orillia, Ontario, was convicted of rape and robbery following a 2023 trial and sentenced in January 2024. He was tried under the 1981 Criminal Code, which still included rape as an offence; it was later replaced by sexual assault.
During trial, court heard that the woman was attacked by a stranger in her condo building's underground parkade on a September night in 1981. The woman, now 78, testified that she was raped and her purse was stolen. She sought help from a neighbour, who called police.
The case remained unsolved for decades until Edmonton Police Service investigators reopened it in 2018. Cuttings from the dress the woman wore—stained with semen—turned up a positive DNA match with Beausoleil in 2019. His DNA had been added to a police database following a judge's order for an unrelated crime committed in the years after the 1981 attack.
Crown prosecutors had argued the original sentence was unfit and sought seven years for the rape conviction, plus one consecutive year for the robbery. Defence counsel sought a global sentence of three years.
The original sentencing judge, Court of King's Bench Justice Paul Belzil, recognized the attack as "an absolutely terrifying event" and "a brutal attack on a defenceless person," noting the victim continued to suffer the effects more than four decades later. Belzil found several aggravating factors, including Beausoleil—who was 28 at the time—claiming he had a gun, the victim injuring her finger and requiring a splint, and the attack occurring at night in the parkade where the victim lived.
However, the appeal court panel found Belzil excluded several details from his recitation of the case's facts, failing to appropriately convey the attack's seriousness.
