International Shia News Agency

Quebec man sentenced to 57 months in prison for throwing acid in girlfriend’s face

SHAFAQNA (International Shia News Association)- A Quebec Court judge has agreed with a joint sentencing recommendation that left Nikolas Stefanatos, a man who threw a corrosive cleaning product in his girlfriend’s face, with a 57-month sentence.

With time served factored in, Stefanatos will have 16 months on his sentence.

The judge said Tuesday that no sentence will erase the permanent scars that Stefanatos’s crime left on ex-girlfriend Tanya St-Arnauld. The attack took place in 2012.

The former hairdresser suffered third-degree burns to 19 per cent of her body.

The sentence will be followed by three years of probation that will include a set of 17 conditions designed, in part, to address a serious problem Stefanatos has with drugs and alcohol. He was high on the day he attacked St-Arnauld, a woman he had been living with when the attack occurred.

Outside the courtroom, St-Arnauld said that while she understands what went into the joint sentencing recommendation, including that a judge has to factor in sentences from similar cases, ‎she still found 16 months to be very little.

“It’s okay. I was aware of it, but it’s not much. It’s 16 months and in a year-and-a-half he’ll be out and walking about. It took me longer to get better and do my (surgeries). In 16 months, he’ll look normal, he’ll be able to change his name and in 16 months I’ll still be scarred,” the victim said.

St-Arnauld had to be placed in an induced coma twice after Stefanatos threw the cleaning product on her during a heated argument following a day spent with friends.

The judge, Helene Di Salvo, said Stefanatos’s guilty plea was the mitigating factor in her accepting the sentence. She also noted that Stefanatos expressed remorse while he stood charged in the case.

A recent Supreme Court decision has changed how the time an accused spends behind bars awaiting the outcome of his case is factored in to the eventual sentence. So, every day that Stefanatos spent detained counted as a day and a half.

en.shafaqna.com

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