5 years for sex assault

Advisory: This story contains details of sexual assaults involving a minor.

A Victoria man has received a five-year sentence for sexually assaulting a minor twice in 2018 after providing her illicit drugs.

Peter John Hooper, 49, was sentenced last month in Victoria after being convicted in 2023 of two counts of sexual assault and two counts of sexual interference.

The victim was 14 when she met Hooper in June 2018 and was actively using drugs and spending time in downtown Victoria with others with addiction issues, the sentencing decision by Justice Jan Brongers says.

On one day in June 2018, she took the bus with two acquaintances to Langford to get drugs from Hooper. The four of them smoked methamphetamine and drove around Victoria so Hooper could buy more drugs before he drove the group to an unoccupied motorhome on Bear Mountain.

Hooper left the motorhome to get condoms. One of the girl’s acquaintances had the girl change into lingerie and told her to say she was 17 if Hooper asked her age.

When Hooper returned, he had sexual intercourse with the girl. He did not ask for consent or her age and she did not want to have sex with him, the decision says.

In October 2018, when the girl was 15, living with a friend and consuming crack daily, she and a friend contacted Hooper to get drugs from him. The girl was then willing to have sex with Hooper to get drugs, the decision says.

Hooper gave the girl a pipe, which she smoked believing it contained methamphetamine. However, she became sleepy, leading her to believe it contained fentanyl.

Hooper got on top of the girl and again had intercourse with her while she was “nodding off,” eventually losing consciousness, the decision says.

Again, he did not ask her age.

At trial, the girl said she suffers from complex post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the assaults.

“She has nightmares, flashbacks when she is intimate with partners, and is triggered when she sees people who look like Mr. Hooper,” the decision says.

The girl’s parents said in a victim impact statement that Hooper preyed on “an extremely vulnerable girl” who was dependent on drugs and easily influenced.

“He took advantage of a situation that frankly was vile and incomprehensible. The timing of these assaults certainly [exacerbated] our daughter’s continuous efforts to get sober and prolonged her and our great suffering during that period.”

Hooper was using crystal methamphetamine consistently for six months until his arrest in late 2018, but he quit drugs while in custody and has not relapsed since his release in early 2019.

He pleaded guilty in 2021 to two incidents involving a 15-year-old victim in July 2018 and was convicted of sexual exploitation and sexual assault against a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old for incidents between May and December 2018.

Hooper’s defence lawyer proposed a conditional sentence to be served in the community, arguing the offences took place when Hooper was regularly using crystal methamphetamine, which made him “careless about who he was spending time with and what he was doing.”

In particular, Mr. Hooper was not careful about verifying the age of persons with whom he engaged in sexual activity,” his lawyer argued.

His reckless behaviour stopped after he quit using drugs, his lawyer argued.

The Crown argued for a sentence of eight to 10 years.

Brongers said the impact of Hooper’s “reprehensible” actions has been “significant and enduring,” continuing to diminish the girl’s quality of life six years later.

“Mr. Hooper’s conduct must be denounced, and he must be deterred from engaging in such abhorrent behaviour in the future,” Brongers said.