The man who pleaded guilty in December to drugging and sexually abusing 13 women, while he recorded his crimes on a cell phone, is facing the likelihood of a lengthy prison sentence.
On Friday, defence lawyer Robert Bellefeuille recommended to Quebec Court Judge Pierre Dupras that his client Samuel Moderie, 29, receive a 15-year sentence for having abused the women, most of whom he met through dating apps. While the sentence recommendation might seem long, it does not compare to the 25-year sentence the Crown is seeking in the case.
During a hearing at the Montreal courthouse the day before, prosecutor Jérôme Laflamme recommended the 25-year sentence while arguing what happened to each of the 13 victims should be reflected in the prison term. Laflamme began the Crown’s arguments by recommending sentences for each complainant. They ranged from a five-year sentence, for a case where a woman’s life was put in danger by the way Moderie drugged her, to a six-month sentence, in a case where Moderie only admitted to a voyeurism charge. When added together the individual sentences reached a total of 36 years, if they were to be served consecutively. Laflamme then reduced the Crown’s suggestion to a total sentence of 25 years.
“Twenty-five years would send a clear message” of deterrence, the prosecutor said.
Bellefeuille agreed that what happened to each woman should be reflected in the sentence, but he quoted a few times from a section of the Criminal Code that says “where consecutive sentences are imposed, the combined sentence should not be unduly long or harsh.”
“I tried to find precedents where people received sentences of 25 years. Personally, I could not land on one. Maybe I didn’t have enough time to do all my research, but anyway, from what I understand, sentences imposed for sexual assault … it’s not often we see that,” Bellefeuille said.
He also argued that “sentences of 25 years are for manslaughter or murder.”
On Dec. 14, Moderie pleaded guilty to nine counts of sexual assault, two counts of administering a stupefying or overpowering drug, 11 counts of disseminating an intimate image of a person without their consent and one count of possession of benzodiazepine, a drug that slows brain activity.
He attacked women in Montreal, Laval, Brownsburg-Chatham and in St-Zotique, where he lived before his arrest.
When he was arrested, police searched his phone and realized he had recorded videos of his abusing many women. In two cases, investigators were unable to track down the victims.
He has been detained since Feb. 1, 2023, which is the equivalent of 32 months. Each day a person charged with a crime spends behind bars while awaiting the outcome of their case counts as a day-and-a-half against the sentence they receive.
Laflamme reminded the judge that many of the eight women who testified this week about the effect Moderie’s crimes has left on them used words like “shame” and said they still somehow blame themselves while describing how they feel today. They also said they felt humiliated when they realized what Moderie did to them while they were unconscious.
In some cases, Moderie bound the victims breasts with tie-wraps. In other cases he urinated on the victim’s breasts or inside their mouths.
Laflamme also noted that Moderie was convicted in the past in a similar case. He gave a woman he knew a drug and told her it was Advil. When she passed out, he sexually assaulted the woman and recorded it on his cell phone. The woman realized she had been drugged and called the police. When police searched Moderie’s phone, they found evidence that proved the woman had been sexually assaulted. They also found photos that revealed Moderie had taken nude photos of the woman over a two-year period without her knowledge.