Sexual assault: Facebook predator gets 4 years in prison

A Montrealer who said he was proud to be a “real asshole” after raping two women he met online, including one with an intellectual disability, discovered the hard way that his crimes would earn him four years in prison.

“I fucked you, I got what I wanted, the rest I don’t care. A real asshole […] as you say, and proud of it,” Si Rabah Touat wrote to his victim, shortly after raping her at her home in December 2021.

Touat, 34, had contacted the woman on the Facebook dating application under a false identity. After she and he agreed not to have sex, the victim took her into her home, where she was attacked despite her “no.”

He doesn’t understand anything

It was a recurrence, since a few weeks earlier, he had used the same modus operandi, this time with a woman with an intellectual disability who lived in a resource for women in difficulty.

The woman was warned by a worker that “this does not look like a date” and the latter also told her to “be careful”, but she still went to the accused’s house, where she was raped three times.

Because in the man’s mind, he had the right to do so and the consequences didn’t matter to him. Moreover, during the trial at the Montreal courthouse, he did not hesitate to blame the victims.

“Clearly, the offender is inhabited by the myth that a woman who provokes desire in a man becomes responsible for the latter’s supposedly uncontrollable impulses,” commented Judge Alexandre Dalmau. However, there is nothing further from the truth.”

Consequences

Touat also learned the hard way that a sex crime had serious consequences: shortly after his indictment, he lost his security guard license as well as his job.

“He was subsequently refused employment insurance benefits,” noted the judge, adding that since then, Touat had been living on social assistance benefits, with his mother.

And three years after his crimes, he failed in his attempt to get home prison, instead receiving four years within the four cold walls of a penitentiary.

The victims, for their part, try to rebuild themselves, saying they have experienced depression or a feeling of shame mixed with guilt.

“You are not responsible for what happened to you,” recalled the magistrate. Only the offender is, and it is with him that shame should find its place.”