A Kingston man, who has more than once conducted campaigns of insult and intimidation against Kingston women of African and Asian heritage, has been sentenced to 100 days in jail in addition to 113 days of pretrial custody for his latest racist rantings.

Matthew D. Schneider, 25, pleaded guilty in Kingston’s Ontario Court of Justice to charges of criminally harassing a woman he doesn’t know over a period of about two-and-a-half months from May through mid-July and a related violation of the two years of probation he received for a similar offence in August last year — by failing to keep the peace.

Schneider’s jail time, including enhanced credit on his pretrial custody, is deemed the equivalent of a nine-month jail sentence.

In addition, Justice Robert Graydon imposed another three-year probation order on him, overlapping his current probation term, and ordered that Schneider complete all assessments and counselling he’s directed to by his probation officer, including counselling for psychological and psychiatric issues.

At the request of assistant Crown attorney Janet O’Brien he’s prohibited for the period of his probation from being anywhere inside an area of the city’s downtown and Sydenham district, bordered by Barrie and Ontario streets, and between Queen and King streets. The Crown prosecutor said that section of Kingston appears to be where Schneider likes to target women.

O’Brien told the judge his latest victim first became aware of Schneider one day when she was leaving work at Hotel Dieu Hospital. Schneider, a large pale-skinned man, was standing across the street when he caught sight of her and yelled out "n—-r s–t."

In the months that followed he spewed both words at her habitually and the woman later told Kingston Police she was confronted by him about 50 times, both when she was alone and in the company of others, even when she was with her boyfriend.

According to O’Brien, the first time Schneider saw the couple together, he yelled at the woman: "You think you’re special, now that you’ve found yourself a white boy? We don’t have interracial couples in this city."

O’Brien also told Justice Graydon that Schneider followed the victim all the way to her home, trailed her into the lobby of her workplace and wasn’t at all deterred by the presence of her boyfriend. Whenever he found them together, the judge was told, Schneider derided the victim for dating someone with a different skin colour.

The public at large also had no effect on his behaviour. Schneider harangued the couple with racial slurs when he found them in a public park, O’Brien told the judge, and on downtown streets, at least once in proximity to occupied patios, an experience his victim found particularly humiliating.

Neither the woman nor her boyfriend had any idea who their tormentor was. But O’Brien said they did finally manage to take his picture, which was turned over to Kingston Police. Several officers were able to identify him, she said, and he was finally arrested.

Schneider agreed the account of his behaviour was factual when Justice Graydon asked him if he accepted everything the Crown prosecutor had said.

But it was actually his third time hearing the synopsis in court and the first time he’d restricted himself to a simple affirmative. On two previous occasions he pleaded guilty to the crimes, but denied most of the substance of the harassment.

The first time was in late October when he appeared in front of Justice Allan Letourneau and Schneider’s lawyer, Paul Blais, told the judge his client took issue with the words attributed to him, but "admits to enough of the facts to make out the offence."

Justice Letourneau said that wasn’t good enough. He noted that Schneider already had five prior convictions for criminal harassment and said: "We have to know what he admits."

He then offered Blais and his client a choice: He could either strike the plea, allowing them to try again in front of a different judge or, if the case remained in front of him, he told them it would require a "significant hearing."

Schneider opted to have his pleas struck and tried again two weeks later, on Nov. 9, pleading guilty in front of Justice Larry O’Brien.

On that occasion Blais told Justice O’Brien, "there’s nothing I can tell you that would in any way justify this sort of behaviour," and he conceded his client has previously been convicted for "similar occurrences."

Yet Schneider has been psychiatrically assessed and found not only fit to stand trial but "to have no mental illness," Blais said. Further complicating the picture, he told the judge, "I haven’t been able to wrap my brain around why this type of behaviour occurs in public when [Schneider] appears to hold very different views in private."

Again, however, when Justice O’Brien asked Schneider if he agreed with the facts he’d just heard read out in court, Schneider replied: "I don’t agree with the statement, but it is what it is."

Justice O’Brien then refused to accept his guilty pleas and struck them a second time.

In front of Justice Graydon, however, Schneider restricted himself to a one-word confirmation of his plea, declined the judge’s offer to add anything to the record and let his lawyer do the talking.

"You’ll see he has a record for similar type behaviour over the last few years," Blais told Justice Graydon. "There seem to be one or two of these incidents a year."

Blais again claimed that his client’s public and private personas don’t mesh. He told the judge Schneider has posted comments online that he suggested express a diametrically opposing view to those he displayed during his harassment of his victim.

Crown prosecutor O’Brien, however, challenged his suggestion that there’s a dichotomy between Schneider’s private and public attitudes. According to Kingston Police, who have investigated his online activities, she told Justice Graydon, "he seems to be acting in his private life as he does in his public life."

She told the judge he’s posted to online dating sites, for example, stipulating that black and Asian women should not reply.

She also told the judge that, in addition to the harm his behaviour inflicts on his individual victims, "it’s embarrassing for Kingston that members of our community, who are Asian or black, are being accosted in this way."

Blais, however, came equipped with some examples of alternate postings he said his client also authored, extolling the beauty of black and Asian women.

In one of the posts, he calls them "the most beautiful women on earth"; claims to "love and respect" Muslim women and throws in at the end that he has no use for "western women."

Justice Graydon appeared to find the contrariness as striking as Blais and directed that print-outs of those posts get passed along to Schneider’s probation officer, together with the synopsis of his crime.

He expressed the hope that they might assist in determining what’s going on with Schneider.

syanagisawa@postmedia.com