NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — Amanda Todd's mother says it's "laughable" that a defence lawyer has requested a two-year sentence for a man who repeatedly tormented her teenage daughter as part of a prolonged online luring and sexual extortion scheme.
"That should never be put on the table," Carol Todd said Thursday outside B.C. Supreme Court after a sentencing hearing.
Lawyer Joseph Saulnier said Aydin Coban is already serving an 11-year sentence for similar offences against 33 young victims in the Netherlands and more prison time would be "unduly harsh."
Coban's lawyers had asked for a concurrent six-year sentence on Wednesday, but are now seeking a two-year term to be served after his Dutch sentence is completed in August 2024.
"This is a sentence for the same course of conduct, for the same wrongful behaviour," Saulnier said of his client, who was extradited to Canada and found guilty in August of multiple offences related to his online abuse of Todd, starting when she was 12.
Justice Martha Devlin questioned Saulnier's reasoning several times in distinguishing different victims and separate trials in two countries.
"I'm not bound by the Dutch regime," she said. "I'm guided by sentencing in Canada."
Devlin is expected to announce Coban's sentence on Friday.
Crown attorney Louise Kenworthy has requested a 12-year sentence to be served after the completion of Coban's Dutch term, saying he tormented Todd online for over two years and that his conduct was a dominant factor in her suicide.
She said he has shown no remorse, opted not to participate in any rehabilitation and is a high risk to reoffend.
Todd said Coban's sentence must show that Canada takes sexual violence against children seriously.
"If he gets two years, or even four years, we're going to have to look at the whole system," Todd said, adding she would be contacting her member of Parliament as well as provincial and federal justice ministers to push for a change in the law.
She attended Coban's trial in the Netherlands and said her daughter's case was not considered part of those proceedings but rather a separate case to be heard in a Canadian courtroom.
"I find it very hypocritical that during the (Canadian) trial nothing could be talked about, about the Dutch trial. But now all of a sudden it's about the Dutch trial and those victims being similar to Amanda and this sentence should be rolled into that one," she said.
"It is so laughable."
Todd took her own life at age 15, a few weeks after posting a video using flash cards saying she had been blackmailed by an online predator who demanded she perform sexual acts on a web camera.
The court has heard Coban often pretended to be a teenage girl and used 22 aliases to groom Todd before exploiting and harassing her and sending pornographic material to her friends, parents and school administrators if she did not provide more material.
He is now serving his Dutch sentence at the North Fraser Pretrial Centre in Port Coquitlam, Todd's hometown.
Saulnier said he's not asking the court to ignore the harm Todd endured.
He told court his client does not have access to music and books like in the Dutch prison where he began his sentence but now spends 21 hours a day in a cell in a foreign country.
Devlin suggested Coban isn't suffering through any hardship and has chosen not to participate in any programming offered to him, as stated in a Dutch probation report on getting advice on conditional release or parole.
"The reality is, based on the report that I've read, that that's his preference."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2022.
Camille Bains, The Canadian Press
