St-Laurent man who sexually assaulted several women faces deportation after appeal rejected

A resident of the St-Laurent borough who admitted to sexually abusing six women and two girls over the course of 13 months will probably be deported after Quebec Superior Court rejected his appeal of his 16-month sentence.

In a decision made last week by Justice Yvan Poulin, Sobhi Akra, 41, was ordered to report to a provincial jail to begin serving the sentence he received on June 19, 2023.

When the time he had already served behind bars was factored into his sentence, Akra was left with a 12-month prison term to serve. He appealed the sentence based on several arguments, including how he probably will be deported because the sentence is more than six months. The father of four is a permanent resident and had only been in Canada for two years before he started his series of crimes.

Between October 2017 and November 2018, Akra sexually assaulted four women and a minor and he tried to sexually assault two women and another minor. He did not know the victims and would approach them from behind before he groped them. In one case, he groped a woman on the platform of a train station and in another he approached the victim while she was reaching for something in her car.

In the cases where he sexually assaulted the victims, Akra groped their buttocks, thighs, hips, crotch or breasts.

When Quebec Court Judge Alexandre St-Onge heard sentencing arguments, the Crown sought a 22-month sentence while Akra’s lawyer first argued for a sentence he could serve in the community. His lawyer later changed the suggestion to a prison term of six months less one day.

In the appeal, Akra argued that St-Onge did not properly weigh the aggravating factors in his case versus the mitigating factors, including his claim that there was no sexual dimension involved in his crimes. Akra argued he was having difficulty adapting to life in Canada and was working in an environment where he felt he was denigrated.

While determining the sentence, St-Onge noted Akra’s denial that there was a sexual dimension to his crimes and how it contradicted the evidence, including how he told one victim: “You’re so sexy, I want to pleasure you.”

In the decision delivered last week, Poulin said he could find no errors in St-Onge’s decision.

“A reading of the judgment as a whole allows us to understand the reasoning underlying the overall decision and to conclude that the sentences imposed on all the charges were just and appropriate,” Poulin wrote. “It appears from the decision that the judge correctly took into account the particular circumstances of each of the crimes while keeping in mind that they were committed in the context of a series of crimes with many similarities.”

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