A Brantford man who now has 10 convictions for assaulting women, was declared a long-term offender during his latest sentencing in a Toronto court.
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Brendan Bananish, 37, repeatedly stabbed the mother of four of his children in a Toronto motel room in 2020 and left her there, bleeding out.
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It took 12 hours for the woman to make her way to a hallway where she was discovered and taken to hospital. She remained there for 21 days with 11 knife wounds, two spinal fractures and an injury to a blood vessel in her chest.
“I find the level of brutality and the violence of his offenses in 2019 and 2020 were escalating,” wrote Justice Andrew Pinto in his decision.
During a four-day hearing last fall, Pinto examined several reports and assessments, including a psychiatric diagnosis by a doctor who said there’s a “substantial risk” that Bananish will re-offend.
Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Bananish moved to Brantford as a teenager where he continued a heavy drinking habit that started when he was 12.
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He used and sold crystal methamphetamine and, in 2006, began accumulating a criminal record for assault and numerous breaches of orders.
In 2019, Brantford Police found a semi-automatic rifle that had been illegally cut-down, with its serial number filed away, in Bananish’s house, after another violent fight with his partner.
Justice Colette Good, who sentenced Bananish to 15 months for having the gun, found it especially disturbing that the man had warned his partner that if police came to the house he would “shoot them.”
But that crime was just the latest in a long list of Brantford offenses: Bananish was involved with various women in the city and, several times, was ordered to have no contact with a former partner, which he ignored.
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In October 2020, he was released from custody and, despite an order that he stayed away from his victim, he moved into her Sault Ste. Marie home.
They visited Toronto and were in a hotel room when Bananish, who had been drinking heavily, seemed to have a psychotic break, and began stabbing the woman with a pocket knife, believing she had killed his children.
“He said ‘If my kids are dead then you’re dead, too’,” Justice Pinto said in his decision.
As the woman held a towel to her bleeding neck, Bananish held her hand and said “I love you.” He left the hotel room twice and eventually packed his things and left, without offering to help the woman.
Bananish was arrested in Brantford the next day.
In some assessments and reports from doctors who have seen Bananish, it was found he had been diagnosed with possible schizophrenia and delusional disorder.
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One doctor found Bananish expressed “delusional thoughts, including about people being involved in a satanic cult of pedophiles and that his children were brought to sex parties by CAS workers.”
He also talked about Freemasons, them believing involved in pedophilia rings and with his children.
The judge reviewed Bananish’s 29 convictions from a dozen arrests, including the assaults on four different intimate partners.
The Toronto Crown prosecutor asked that Bananish be found a long-term offender, who would extend his supervision for up to 10 years after being released from custody.
The Crown also pushed for an eight-year global sentence while Bananish’s lawyer argued against the LTO designation and said he should get a five-year sentence.
Pinto approved the LTO identification, and sentenced Bananish to seven years and three months in custody. With credit for 63 months he’s already served in jail, it leaves 24 months and the judge ordered Bananish should serve that in a federal penitentiary.
The long-term offender designation will stay with Bananish for the next eight years.
@EXPSGamble
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