Hamilton Spectator
A pair of hate-mongers will be sentenced Thursday for threatening behaviour and racially motivated harassment of a young black woman who lived on their street.
The final episode occurred July 16 as the young woman and her friend's 11-year-old daughter were walking in west Hamilton on their way to a variety store. They were confronted by two male neighbours, one of whom had been taunting the woman for weeks with hateful slurs and racial comments. This time, both men began to chant, "We hate niggers," as she and the girl walked down Emerson Street.
"It was especially frightening and disheartening to have one of these confrontations happen in front of (the child). I didn't want her to have to see harassment first-hand and it still bothers me greatly that she witnessed it," said the victim.
The woman told Ontario Court Justice Richard Jennis she was shocked by the level of malevolence aimed at her, and "instantly felt dehumanized and reduced to a thing ... "
"It was very stressful and thoroughly confounding that anyone would do this in this day and age, especially as the aggressors were so young and live in a heavily multicultural environment," she said.
Shane Gill, 38, a sheet metal worker, and Richard Martin, 23, an unemployed labourer, pleaded guilty yesterday to criminal harassment.
Assistant Crown attorney Michael Fox said it was an aggravating factor on sentencing that the convicted men did not know the victim and that their crimes were based purely on the colour of her skin.
Fox described the crimes as "despicable offences" and suggested it should outrage every citizen in the country that incidents such as these were still taking place in 2010.
The Crown and defence lawyer David Walkling jointly recommended a sentence of six months in jail for Gill, followed by three years of probation.
Lawyer Ian Begg sought the same for Martin, but Fox urged six-to-nine months in custody for Begg's client because the conduct in his case was part of a continuing pattern of intimidation and harassment toward the victim.
Earlier that month, on July 3, the woman had been sitting in her living room when she heard a man outside making gunshot noises. She looked out her front window and saw her neighbour, Martin, on the sidewalk making gestures with his hand as if he were shooting a gun at her house.
Nine days later, the woman heard Martin and another man in the parking lot outside her bedroom window. They were loudly singing songs with racially offensive lyrics and yelling, "Go back to Africa."
The woman filed her first police report the next day. Two days later, as she and the 11-year-old girl were walking to the local variety store, they were confronted by Martin and Gill. Martin again made the gunshot noises and the sign of a gun in her direction.
When the men began to spew their racial slurs, the woman and child turned and headed for home. The woman told police Gill was close behind them as they ran inside the house and locked the door. Gill then began to pound on her door.
Once inside, the woman, the young girl and the child's mother moved to the middle of the home for fear that the men would break windows. After police arrived and took a second report, the two women took turns sitting guard on the porch through the night in case of further trouble.
Judge Jennis asked the lawyers to provide him with case law on sentences handed out in Canada for comparable crimes motivated by racial hatred. He remanded the pair into custody until sentencing tomorrow.
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