Married Iraqi Uber driver who assaulted Ontario passenger wanted lighter sentence to stay in Canada

An Ontario judge has sentenced an Iraqi Uber driver to ten months in jail for sexually assaulting his passenger who was just looking for a ride home from a party.

The Ontario Court of Justice heard a woman engaged Sevan Halabi’s services as an Uber driver on Oct. 9, 2022. Halabi, who is a permanent resident of Canada, was angling for a lighter sentence to avoid deportation.

“She wanted him to drive her home from a party she’d attended. Rather than take her home, the offender drove her to an empty parking lot,” Justice Scott Pratt wrote in a recent decision out of Windsor.

“He told her they would have fun. He parked the car and got into the back seat. He moved closer to the victim and forcibly kissed her. He put his hand under her dress and touched her vaginal area over her underwear.”

Halabi ignored the woman’s protests, Pratt said.

“After he tried again to kiss her and she did not respond, he moved away from her,” said the judge.

“She asked if he would still drive her home and he said no. She got out of the car, and he left her in the parking lot.”

It would require me to cut the sentence nearly in half, solely to assist him in avoiding future penalties. I cannot do that

The married father of two had asked the judge for a sentence of six months less a day to avoid immigration consequences.

“I am not unsympathetic to the offender’s family,” Pratt said in a decision dated April 3.

“In my view, however, a sentence of six months less a day for this conduct would be unfit. It would prioritize the offender’s personal circumstances over the need to denounce and deter his conduct and would not be in line with relevant case law. It would be an inappropriate and artificial sentence imposed only to avoid legitimate consequences created by Parliament.”

According to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, permanent residents can be deemed “inadmissible” to Canada for “serious criminality” if they’re sentenced to more than six months in jail.

But six months less a day plus probation — the sentence Halabi’s lawyer argued unsuccessfully for — doesn’t reflect the seriousness of his actions, Pratt said.

“It would require me to cut the sentence nearly in half, solely to assist him in avoiding future penalties,” said the judge. “I cannot do that.”

In laying out the reasons for his sentence, the judge referred to other similar cases from the recent past.

“It is troubling that sexual offences committed by professional drivers are sufficiently common that they have created their own body of case law,” Pratt said. “But that is what has happened.”

The Crown argued Halabi should get a year in jail, followed by three years of probation.

“He married his spouse in 2009, said the judge. “They have two sons, aged 10 and 14.”