A Sarnia woman wasn’t able to see her daughter or grandson last Christmas, but not because of any pandemic-related rules about social gatherings.
She refused to see them because just one week earlier she’d been smacked in the face with a hammer by her neighbour, John Proctor.
“I cannot put them through the trauma of seeing me like that,” she said last week in a Sarnia courtroom.
The incident took place inside their downtown apartment building on Dec. 18. The two neighbours’ relationship had already soured, but it worsened that Saturday when she tried to get into his unit to retrieve her property. The pair struggled with the partially open door that she kept propped open with her foot.
Unable to close the door, Proctor, a 41-year-old artist, reached for a steel hammer sitting near the entrance to his unit.
“He used the hammer to strike (her) in the face,” assistant Crown attorney Josie Baier said while reading an agreed statement of facts.
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“The pain was off the charts,” the woman wrote in a statement filed in court.
Defence lawyer Joseph Stoesser noted his client struck her out of fear and impulsivity, not anger.
“He is not a violent man, but he acted in a manner on that day in which he shouldn’t have,” he said. “That is not his character.”
The woman, bleeding heavily, called 911. Police noticed blood outside his unit and inside hers while paramedics took her to Sarnia’s hospital, where she was diagnosed with a large laceration and a small cheekbone fracture.
The woman needed more than 20 stitches on both the inside and outside of her facial area. “To sew my face and nose back together,” she wrote.
Proctor was arrested and hit with three charges. Seven months later he pleaded guilty to one of them, assault causing bodily harm, and was sentenced to slightly less than six months of house arrest and a curfew along with two years of probation.
Justice Deborah Austin, who imposed the sentence lawyers on both sides suggested, pointed out homeowners are entitled to use a degree of force at the threshold of their homes to prevent someone from getting inside.
“(But) this involved the use of excessive force,” the judge added. “It is very clearly understood that (she) suffered harm here.”
The woman’s face is scarred and requires reconstructive surgery, she said in her statement, but she can’t get the surgery until there is further healing including nerve regrowth.
“My cheek is rock hard with no feeling,” she said. “The nerves may or may not be reattaching – only time will tell.”
Along with the physical pain, she’s struggled financially with the costs of expensive therapies, treatments and creams. There’s also the emotional toll of avoiding her friends amid depression and being disfigured.
“I do not want people to see me,” she said. “I have been living in jail, my own jail that John Proctor put me in Dec. 18, 2021. And it is just wrong.”
Baier said the Crown initially was going to ask for a jail sentence, but agreed to recommend a conditional sentence as Proctor, a U.S. citizen married to a Canadian, is a foreign national who could face deportation despite having no prior criminal record.
“So for that reason we were seeking a lower sentence,” she explained.
Stoesser pointed out the jumping off point for serious criminality under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is six months. So the sentence he and the Crown came up with was 165 days, or five-and-a-half months.
Austin ordered Proctor to serve the first three months under strict house arrest – he’s moved out of the apartment building the woman lives in – and the rest under a curfew. The two years of probation will start afterwards.
Based on his release order from December and now under his sentence and probation, Proctor can’t talk to the woman or contact her in any way. But, when asked by the judge, she agreed to let him read an apology letter he wrote to her while they were all in court.
“Not a day goes by where I don’t feel horrible about what I’ve done to you and I wish I could take it all back,” he said.
Proctor apologized for the pain he caused her and didn’t expect her to forgive him, he just wished they could have talked it out and avoided a confrontation. “I constantly replay the incident in my head and wish I could have handled things different and in a civilized manner,” he said.
Stoesser said his client has almost finished a 10-session anger-management course despite anger not being the source of the attack.
Austin called the offence serious, but noted it was also a learning opportunity for other Sarnia residents.
“It’s a lesson to all neighbours who have a dispute to count to 10 and to find other ways, to call police – not to carry on a conflict,” she said. “Because the escalation here became criminal in nature.”
Proctor was ordered to forfeit the hammer and is banned from weapons for 10 years. The other two charges were withdrawn.
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