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Ex-Mountie jailed for sex assault

An ex-Mountie was sentenced to two and a half years in jail on Thursday for raping a girl he came to know while investigating a sexual assault in which she was the victim.

An ex-Mountie was sentenced to two and a half years in jail on Thursday for raping a girl he came to know while investigating a sexual assault in which she was the victim.

Ambrose Gregory Wolfe, 60, of Yorkton, Sask., pleaded guilty to sexual assault charges in October 2014. He was charged in 2012 after the victim came to police detailing three years of abuse she experience while under the guardianship of Wolfe.

He was sentenced on Thursday by Justice Kirk Sisson in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench.

In 1996, Wolfe — then an RCMP officer with a Central Alberta detachment — was called to a residence to investigate a reported sexual assault. A 14-year-old girl was the victim.

Following the investigation, the 14-year-old was placed in Wolfe’s care.

From 1996 to 1999, Wolfe twice pressured the girl into having anal intercourse. She tried to stop and threatened to tell the police.

Wolfe was an RCMP officer from 1979 until his retirement in 1999. He later moved home to Saskatchewan, where he took a position with the Yorkton Tribal Council as a child protection investigator.

The victim’s impact statement was read on her behalf in court.

“I feel like a nobody,” it read. “I’m not a girl and I’m not a woman. I put on a fake smile to hide the tears.

“I never know what flashback I will see.”

In the statement, the victim said she has and continues to self harm. She has attempted suicide on several occasions, using pills and by hanging. She has been homeless and in and out of jail.

“I blame myself.”

In 2012, the victim went to a Central Alberta RCMP detachment, telling them of the crimes. Wolfe was interviewed and while he denied it at first, he eventually confessed in full.

“I committed the evil because I was an evil person at the time,” said Wolfe.

A preliminary inquiry was held but Wolfe pleaded guilty before the trial was scheduled to start.

Crown prosecutor Maurice Collard told Sisson that the maximum sentence at the time of the offences was five years for sexual assault. He felt that sentence was not enough, citing the high position of trust and authority that Wolfe had as both the youth’s guardian and as an RCMP officer.

“There are scars, long-term damage,” said Collard. “Next to homicide, there is no offence more grave given who Wolfe was.”

Collard said if the offence had occurred after Parliament raised the maximum sentence to 10 years, he would seek a six to seven year sentence.

Wolfe’s counsel Michael Sparks, of Edmonton, said Wolfe became a self-confessed monster at the time and that’s not who he was. In 1994, Wolfe lost his son in a car crash and the loss affected him deeply.

Wolfe, of Aboriginal ancestry, spent two years at a residential school as a child before being sent to a nearby public school. At the residential school, he was beaten for not speaking English. In his youth, Sparks said his client was abused by family members. After dropping out of school in Grade 8, he went to work. In 1979, he completed his high school equivalency and became an RCMP member.

A report developed for the sentencing hearing said Wolfe was a low to almost no risk of re-offending. Sparks said unlike other sexual assault convictions cited as providing precedence, this was not an ongoing repetitive offence. It happened twice in three years.

Sparks said the crime absolutely demands jail time, but he suggested the range of two to three years.

In his sentence, Sisson said Wolfe showed honest remorse. Sisson said Wolfe’s background, including direct systemic abuse, played a role in his decision.

Sisson ordered Wolfe be placed on the sex offender registry for 10 years and that he surrender a sample of his DNA.

mcrawford@www.reddeeradvocate.com