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By Joe Fries

Even if it was a joke, a judge didn’t think there was anything funny about giving a 15-year-old girl a sex toy and thong underwear for Christmas.

In fact, Kelowna provincial court Judge Ellen Burdett called the gift idea “reprehensible” Monday morning at the sentence hearing for 52-year-old Ronald Laverdure, who was charged with corrupting children under a rarely used section of the Criminal Code. He received a suspended sentence and will be on probation for the next two years.

Laverdure is not the girl’s biological father, although he was in a common-law relationship with her mother for nine years. The couple split up in 2004, but he still had access to the girl and her siblings, which is why they were at his house on Dec. 24, 2007.

According to Crown counsel Martin Nadon, the girl, whose name is protected by a publication ban, went to bed around 9 p.m. A half-hour later, Laverdure entered her room and told her he had a “special gift” for her, and that the best kind of Christmas present “is a great orgasm.”

The girl was taken aback by the penis-shaped vibrator and declined Laverdure’s offer to show her how to use it. Early the next morning, she awoke before the rest of the family and went to open the gifts in her Christmas stocking, where she found four pairs of thong underwear, which she hid in her purse before going back to bed.

Around 10 a.m., Laverdure woke her up, asked her if she had used the vibrator, then took it out of the package and invited her to touch it. He then offered to take her to his bathroom to show her how to use it.

The girl’s mother, after learning of the gift, phoned Laverdure for an explanation, and he told her it was meant as a joke and that a salesperson had told him it was appropriate for a 15-year-old.

Laverdure later gave a statement to police and said he bought the vibrator for a girlfriend he split up with the previous November, and instead gave it to the girl as a lark. He denied ever offering to show her how to use it.

Wearing a grey sport coat, blue jeans and cowboy boots, Laverdure, who now works as a truck driver in the Alberta oil patch, apologized to the court: “I just regret the whole thing…. It’s cost me a lot.”

Judge Burdett said she was “absolutely shocked and appalled that a person who was in the position of a parent would ever think that such a thing was a joke.”

She said the gift of the vibrator was “reprehensible,” and the gift of the thong underwear “disturbing.”

But Burdett did note Laverdure’s guilty plea and lack of a related criminal record in agreeing to the two-year suspended sentence, recommended by lawyers for both sides. Conditions attached to the sentence include having no contact with the girl and attending counselling as directed by his probation officer, which Nadon expects to include sex offender programming.

The matter had been set for trial in January. An additional count of sexual exloitation was stayed by the Crown. Neither the judge nor the lawyers had ever handled a charge of corrupting children before, which carries a maximum sentence of two years in jail.

joe@kelowna.com
250-575-4303

Tags: corrupting children, judge ellen burdett, ronald laverdure, sex toy

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