A former Sarnia senior was convicted Thursday of multiple charges linked to underage girls, including seven sex-related offenses against three girls who were around age 11 or 12 at the time.
A former Sarnia senior was convicted Thursday of multiple charges linked to underage girls, including seven sex-related offenses against three girls who were around age 11 or 12 at the time.
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Terrence Hardy, 76, was charged with three counts each of sexual assault and sexual interference, two counts of invitation to sexual touching and one count of assault involving four underage girls. The abuse took place in his Sarnia home while he was in his late 60s.
During a six-day trial held earlier this year, the retired salesman denied anything happened or being sexually attracted to the girls. But when Superior Court Justice Russell Raikes returned with his decision Thursday, he said he didn’t believe him.
“I do not believe the defendant that no sexual touching ever occurred. I do not believe him that he was not attracted to the girls,” he said while reading his 32-page decision.
Raikes found Hardy guilty of eight of the nine charges he was facing, with the lone acquittal being one count of invitation to sexual touching involving one of the complainants. Hardy, wearing a teal dress shirt and beige pants while sitting at a table with defense lawyer Ken Marley, didn’t react to hearing the judge’s decision.
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At Marley’s request, the judge ordered a pre-sentence report and allowed his client to stay out on lease until his sentencing hearing in early December.
The trial heard Hardy struck up a friendship with some of the girls and their mother after meeting them at a Sarnia park. He later started buying the girls food, clothes and cellphones and invited them to his house.
Some of the girls testified the sexual abuse started when they were around 11 or 12 and progressed from peck-on-the-check kisses to longer kisses to sexual touching. Some of the touching took place while they were playing games such as tag or hide and seek. He also showed them pornography.
Hardy denied all of this, but the judge found he was disingenuous while testing about physical limitations during games such as tag and hide and seek. He also recalled Hardy said one of the complainants put on quite a performance while she was on the stand, but he found her to be entirely reliable.
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“Her evidence was clear, concise, compelling and consistent,” Raikes said.
He felt the opposite way about Hardy’s testimony of what happened with that girl.
“I find his evidence to be untrue and it does not raise a reasonable doubt,” he said.
All four of the girls, whose identities are protected by a publication ban, and one of their mothers testified during the trial. The judge said he had issues with the credibility and reliability of one of the complainants, who he felt was careless with the truth, but two others were excellent witnesses who gave consistent and compelling evidence.
Hardy, who left Sarnia and lived in London and Strathroy in recent years, has a prior conviction from 30 years ago for sexual interference linked to a child younger than 16, but he later got a pardon, he testified. He has no other prior criminal record.
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