Assault: Sexual Assault Penalties

What are the consequences of a sexual assault conviction? That’s a very interesting question because there are no mandatory minimum penalties for sexual assault in Canada. As a result of that, the courts could resolve the matter through a variety of resolutions. Anything from a discharge, or other resolutions that don’t involve the  acquisition of a criminal record, up to prolonged periods of incarceration, because of the breadth of this section and that it engages all forms of sexualized assaults, we see punishments that are on a varying spectrum as well. The punishments for sexual assault must be able to encapsulate all the potential assaults, as a result we see no mandatory minimum penalty, but we see no mandatory maximum penalty either.