• Advisory: This story describes details of a sexual assault.
A Port Hardy man has been sentenced to six years in prison for forcing his way into a woman’s home and sexually assaulting her three years ago.
Ronald David Louie Walkus, 40, was found guilty in February of breaking and entering and sexually assaulting the woman in her Port Hardy home.
The victim, referred to in a sentencing decision as D.W. because her identity is protected by a publication ban, testified that Walkus knocked on her front door around 11 p.m. on Oct. 20, 2021. When she asked who was at the door, he said: “It’s Ronnie,” the decision says.
D.W. did not know Walkus personally but had heard of him.
She told Walkus he was not welcome in her apartment and should leave, but he forced his way in.
Walkus forced D.W. into her bedroom and pinned her to the bed, removing her clothes while she struggled and yelled for help. He forced sexual intercourse without D.W.’s consent.
Walkus left her apartment after D.W. said she was calling the police. Port Hardy RCMP officers arrived around 12:20 a.m. and did not find Walkus at the apartment.
D.W. went to the hospital in Port McNeill for a forensic examination by a sexual-assault nurse examiner, who recovered Walkus’s DNA from D.W.’s vagina. The likely source of the DNA was sperm, the decision says.
Walkus did not deny these details but his lawyer argued at trial that he and D.W. were in a relationship and that he was regularly using alcohol and crack cocaine, leading to blackouts.
Walkus accepted that he sexually assaulted D.W. but believed it happened during a blackout and said he had no memory of the event.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Jan Brongers wrote in his decision that Walkus’s arguments were contradicted by D.W.’s testimony and were not backed up by evidence.
“I do not accept that any of them have been proven for sentencing purposes,” he wrote.
In a written victim impact statement, D.W. said she has been in constant fear when out in public since the assault. She said she struggles with anxiety and panic and has undergone counselling as a result. She fears Walkus will come to her work or her home.
The Crown recommended a sentence of six to eight years, while the defence said a sentence of four to five and a half years would be more appropriate.
In sentencing Walkus to six years in prison, Brongers considered factors laid out in a Gladue report, a pre-sentencing report prepared for an Indigenous offender that includes information about their background, including history regarding residential schools, abuse, child welfare removal and underlying developmental issues, such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Walkus had a difficult childhood in a “household plagued by alcoholism, poverty, abuse and neglect,” the sentencing decision by Brongers says.
He and his siblings were in and out of foster care from an early age and he experienced physical and sexual abuse, as well as witnessing violence by his father and uncles toward their spouses.
Walkus has struggled with alcohol addiction his entire adult life and periods of heavy crack cocaine use. He has been sober while in custody but admits he will likely revert to substance use immediately if there is a delay between his release from jail and treatment.
“He recognizes that he needs to better himself so that he does not find himself back in ‘the system’ after his eventual release from prison,” the decision says.
An aggravating factor for sentencing was Walkus’s criminal record, which includes 63 convictions, the first when he was 19 years old and the most recent a conviction for a sexual assault that took place three months before the assault on D.W.
The convictions include sexual and violent offences, breaking and entering, drug-related offences and property offences.
At sentencing, Walkus expressed remorse for the effects of his actions on D.W. and apologized.
Walkus’s sentence is reduced by credit for time served since he was brought into custody on May 30, 2023. His remaining sentence is about four years and nine months.
Walkus is required to provide a DNA sample, is prohibited from possessing firearms and other weapons, and must register with police as a sex offender for life.
