A Winnipeg teen whose shocking assault on a 15-year-old girl sparked a provincial government pledge to stop using hotels as emergency placements for children in Child and Family Services care will not be sentenced as an adult, a judge ruled Wednesday.

The now 16-year-old accused previously pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault for the April 1, 2015 attack which left his victim suffering severe and permanent brain damage.

He will return to court next month at which time he will be sentenced to no more than three years custody and community supervision, the maximum allowed under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The maximum adult sentence for a youth convicted of aggravated sexual assault is seven years.

Judge Wanda Garreck said the Crown failed to rebut the presumption the boy was of “diminished moral blameworthiness,” a requirement if a youth accused is to be sentenced as an adult. Court has heard the boy has been diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and a host of cognitive impairments and has been in CFS care since birth.

“I am satisfied the available sentence under the YCJA would be proportionate to the offence and the young person’s degree of responsibility in this case,” Garreck said.

Court heard the boy and victim, both wards of CFS, had been drinking heavily when they tried to return to the Charter House Hotel where they were being lodged and staff refused them entry.

“Nobody alerted the CFS worker or the supervisor responsible for their supervision,” Garreck said.

The teens walked to a nearby parkade where they had sex. At some point, the boy — feeling guilty that he was cheating on his girlfriend — became enraged “and turned that anger toward the victim,” Garreck said.

The boy kicked the girl in the head until she was unconscious and then beat her with a wooden sign. The boy hid the girl’s clothing and purse, then flagged down a police cruiser and claimed a stranger had attacked his friend.

The boy’s story quickly fell apart and he provided police a full confession admitting responsibility for the attack.

The girl spent a year in hospital and had to relearn how to walk and talk, Garreck said. She will require constant care and supervision for the rest of her life.

The boy spent five months prior to the attack living in emergency placements or a hotel after being removed from his foster home for exposing himself.

The boy’s foster mother, who continued to have contact with him after he was removed from her home, said he was showing warning signs of high risk behaviour just days after moving into the hotel, including not attending school and not taking his medications. She said the boy told her “no one cares and the (CFS) worker is sleeping all the time.”

The boy suffers from a variety of problems that “clearly required a structured plan and appropriate supports for (him) to manage safely in the community,” psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Waldman wrote in a report submitted to court.

“Despite very clear opinions from physicians and mental health professionals that (the boy) suffered from deficits that required structure and supervision ... rather than address these issues through the recommendations that had been provided, he was simply placed independently without supervision in a hotel,” Waldman said.

Attack prompted changes for CFS

Last year’s vicious beating of a 15-year-old girl prompted the provincial government to finally stop housing kids under the care of Child and Family Services in hotels.

In the wake of the attack and the revelation both the victim and her 16-year-old attacker had been put up at a nearby hotel by CFS, then-family services minister Kerri Irvin-Ross promised to put an end to the longstanding practice of using of hotels as emergency placements for kids in CFS throughout the province. The government missed its target by nearly five months in rural and northern areas, but the goal was nonetheless eventually achieved.

To do so, that meant adding 55 emergency shelter beds and 114 emergency foster beds throughout Manitoba, as well as 119 unionized child protection support workers.

The new Tory government’s budget includes a further 10% spending bump this year for its recently formed department of families, which includes Child and Family Services.