MANDEL: Sentenced to five years, convicted rapist Hoggard still ain’t singing jailhouse blues

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Not even one night in jail.

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Just hours after he was sentenced to five years in prison for the violent rape of an Ottawa woman six years ago, former Hedley frontman Jacob Hoggard is a free man again.

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“In all circumstances, I am satisfied that his detention is not necessary in the public interest as the applicant has no public safety or air travel concerns and has reasonable grounds for appeal,” Justice Grant Huscroft wrote.

But at least there was some satisfaction for his victim when Hoggard was finally taken away in handcuffs early Thursday morning.

They believed her.

Everything that Ottawa woman Jacob Hoggard did to her — every violent sexual assault, every spit, every slap, every derogatory name and every pinch of his fingers around her neck — the judge accepted as truth.

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“I am satisfied beyond any reasonable doubt that all of the aggravating facts that (she) described occurred, including that she was choked; that Mr. Hoggard called her a pig and a dirty slut and stared at her; and that she suffered all the injuries she described, both physical and psychological,” said Judge Gillian Roberts.

“I believe (her). I accept their evidence in its entirety.”

And with that, the Superior Court judge sentenced the former Hedley frontman to five years in prison for sexual assault involving assault, dismissing his attorney’s arguments that much of his victim’s portrayal was unreliable.

In the afternoon, attorney Megan Savard called for his release, insisting he posed no threat and had strong reasons to overturn the sentence. Huscroft said he reserves his decision.

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And so it seemed the convicted rapist would finally be in custody to serve out his sentence.

Roberts said she would have sentenced the carpenter-turned rock star to an even longer sentence – the Crown’s suggested six to seven years – were it not for the $2.8million lawsuit the victim recently filed against him . She accepted the defense’s submission that “damages will hang over Mr. Hoggard (and by extension his family) for a very long time, possibly for life.”

But who is to blame?

In June, a jury convicted 38-year-old Hoggard of violently assaulting the Ottawa woman he met on Tinder and who had arranged to meet him at a downtown Toronto hotel in November 2016, but charged him with a similar assault on a teenager -Fan free. He still faces charges related to a third complainant in Kirkland Lake.

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When he pleaded bail, his attorney said the final charges were before his encounter with the Ottawa woman. “Lord. Hoggard poses no permanent risk,” Savard insisted.

To the same conclusion, Dr. Hy Bloom, the forensic psychiatrist hired by the defense, who said Hoggard does not suffer from paraphilia and now that he is no longer a rock star and fans are stalking him, his risk of recidivism is low.

Roberts disagreed, noting that the psychiatrist’s opinion was based on incomplete information and Hoggard’s self-disclosure. “I don’t think I can safely consider it a comprehensive profile of Mr. Hoggard’s psychosexual makeup,” she said.

She found that Hoggard has “many sides” — charismatic rock star, manipulative rapist, loyal friend, and hard-working family man. “There is no explanation for the offense,” Roberts noted. “We have to worry about future risks.”

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And worried about the damage he left behind. The woman he manipulated into his hotel room, violently raped, and then dumped, pretending they had a “relaxed” time, will never be the same.

“Whatever fleeting moments of satisfaction Mr. Hoggard may have drawn from his behavior, they have come at the staggering and totally unacceptable cost of changing[her]life forever,” she said. “She went from being an adventurous[woman in her 20s]who wanted to experience life to a disturbed and damaged survivor who isolated herself from much of what life had to offer to get through her days.”

The judge also acknowledged the traumatizing time the woman had to seek justice – the trial was delayed due to the pandemic and she was victimized again on the witness stand when confronted with a phone call secretly recorded by her rapist and then was berated for an inconsistency in a video CBC interview clip when it wasn’t even her.

Under all circumstances, Roberts found a reasonable five-year sentence, and when Hoggard kissed his wife goodbye, it seemed like the disgraced pop star would spend at least one night behind bars singing the jailhouse blues before being released on bail .

But even that was expecting too much.

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