Iqaluit man sentenced to 12 years in prison for sexual assault of minor

An Iqaluit man has been sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for four counts of sexual assault of a minor. 

Robert Sheaves, 67, was charged for offences which happened between July 2021 and February 2022. 

Justice Paul Bychok handed down the sentence on Tuesday. 

Sheaves lured adolescent girls into his apartment with food, money and cigarettes, Bychok said. 

The victim was in her early teens at the time. 

The Crown proposed a prison term between 15 to 20 years. The defence asked for five years due to Sheaves's age, as well as the "limited" number of encounters with the victim.

Bychok disagreed with both those arguments, saying a five-year term "fails to account for the serious intimate physical intrusiveness of Mr Sheaves's crimes." 

Bychok did acknowledge age is a factor a judge must weigh in imposing a "fair and justice sentence", and this is Sheaves's first criminal conviction. 

Originally from Newfoundland, Sheaves served in the Canadian Armed Forces and was stationed in Germany and CFB Petawawa.

He became the senior administrative officer in Grise Fiord in the early 2000s, before moving to Iqaluit.