A 31-year-old Canadian Forces medical technician has been sentenced to the equivalent of a 15-month jail sentence — with 130 days left to serve, plus three years of probation — for crimes he committed against his wife while stationed in Kingston.

In handing down that sentence, however, Justice Allan Letourneau’s outlook was guarded with respect to Jude Thangarajah’s romantic future.

“In my view, and despite his relative youth and no prior criminal record,” the judge wrote, “Mr. Thangarajah’s prospects of rehabilitation with respect to the risk of him committing further domestic violence offences in the future are very uncertain.”

Thangarajah pleaded guilty in Kingston’s Ontario Court of Justice in late October to assaulting and threatening his wife on Dec. 18 last year and criminally harassing her over the four months that followed, after she fled him and went into hiding.

She remains in hiding and told the judge — by means of a victim impact statement read into the court record by assistant Crown attorney Megan Williams — that she continues to fear Thangarajah will find her.

Justice Letourneau observed in his reasons for sentencing that the 31-year-old’s behaviour was “one of the worst cases of marital degradation and humiliation that I have encountered throughout my legal career.”

The couple had been married less than two years and the victim had been living in Canada less than one when Thangarajah’s unrelenting verbal cruelty and contempt, coupled with one last sustained outburst of physical violence, compelled his wife to leave him. By then, however, Justice Letourneau found that he’d “robbed [her] of any companionship, peace, tranquility or love in the marriage.”

He also found that “to her credit, she left as she came in, a dignified and strong woman.”

In October, when Thangarajah entered his guilty pleas, Crown prosecutor Williams said Kingston Police first learned of his household situation in February when his estranged wife sought their help to keep him away.

Williams said the woman ended up recounting to officers how, from the very beginning of their marriage, her husband had called her ugly, dehumanizing names and relentlessly humiliated her. She told police his outbursts were worse when he drank and that he drank daily.

She described his repetitious, degrading assessments of her appearance, pinching her waist and insisting she was fat, too short, too dark and had bad “genetics.”

He told her she wasn’t attractive enough for him to hold her hand in public, according to his wife, and that he couldn’t bear the thought of having a child with her. Williams said he even threatened to have her artificially inseminated with donor sperm from a pale-skinned European so the resulting offspring wouldn’t look like her.

The abuse reached its apex, however, on Dec. 18, according to the Crown prosecutor, when Thangarajah, drunk and feeling mean, decided to target one more time.

His wife was doing laundry in the early afternoon that day when he started. Williams said he called her a “useless b—-,” ordered her out of his house and Canada, then grabbed her right hand and started twisting her wrist.

He then punched his wife twice with a closed fist, she told the judge, and when she cried out he claimed he’d only grabbed her and accused her of being weak.

Justice Letourneau was told Thangarajah then started throwing and kicking the laundry, dumped the contents of a dresser on the floor and forced his wife out of their bedroom implying that she was unworthy to be there.

Williams said the woman retreated to the guest bedroom in distress and lay down on the bed. But Thangarajah kept coming in, poking her, pushing on her hip with his foot. He tried to pull off the blanket she’d burrowed under and Williams said she feared he might get one of his firearms from the basement.

When the woman answered a phone call from her father-in-law, however, Williams said, Thangarajah became completely enraged, believing she was “telling on him.”

He punched walls and threatened “to break her face,” Williams told the judge. When the victim sought solace, cuddling her pet cat, he took the animal from her and kicked the little female in the belly where she still had stitches from recently being spayed.

He justified the cruelty afterward, Williams told the judge, by claiming he’d done it because the cat had been “drinking his blood” by licking a fresh cut.

His wife afterward called her father-in-law, hoping he could influence Thangarajah, but Williams said that made him angrier and he grabbed the telephone from her and called her a string of vulgar names to his father.

Following the phone call, Williams said, Thangarajah inexplicably accused his wife of sexual infidelity with her boss and a neighbour, grabbed her around the throat and lower jaw and pinned her against a wall.

Then he accused her of feeding the cat too many treats and announced that the cat was his, the bedroom was his and the house was his — which by implication meant nothing was hers — and he told her she was useless.

In the meantime, his parents had called back, Williams said, and the victim refused to reassure them, even in the face of her husband’s intimidation.

The judge was told Thangarajah’s brother arrived soon afterward and intervened, blocking him at one point when he ran at his wife.

Thangarajah told his brother “he wanted to break her face” and shoot her “and cut her into little pieces,” Williams told the judge, and he asked his sibling to leave “so he could do what he needed to do.”

Later, after Thangarajah appeared to have calmed, Williams said, his brother did leave the house, but sat outside in his car just in case. Thangarajah, she said, was angered by his brother’s supervision, and when his wife didn’t convince him to leave, he attacked her again, choking her and pulling her hair. In the midst of that attack, the judge was told, he called his mother-in-law and father-in-law in India, called both of them foul names, and while he hurt his wife he asked them if they could hear their daughter crying.

Williams said Thangarajah’s brother came back inside the home soon after that and he argued with him, as well, insulting him in Tamil. His brother refused to leave, however, and for the next four days while he stayed put, Thangarajah’s abuse was confined to verbal and emotional expression.

On the fifth day, Dec. 22, his wife finally left him and claimed refuge at Interval House.

Williams said Thangarajah, with his brother in tow, tracked her down, however, using the geopositioning application built into her phone. The shelter called Kingston Police to report suspicious men outside and Thangarajah was warned to stay away from both Interval House and his wife’s workplace.

He indicated to police that he understood, but he continued sending her messages — to which she didn’t reply but did save, according to Williams, because she didn’t think people would believe the things he was saying otherwise. His messages, she told the judge, vacillated between professions of love and vicious broadsides.

In April this year, he even turned up unexpectedly at the home of his wife’s parents in India, convinced that she was returning there. Williams said he was intent on staying with his in-laws to wait for her, despite their unwillingness to host him. She also told the judge the victim’s father afterward texted her, still in Canada, admonishing her to be careful because he didn’t think Thangarajah was in his right mind.

He was arrested upon his return to Canada as soon as he stepped off the plane and spent 213 days in pretrial custody before deciding to deal with his charges.

Justice Letourneau has ordered Thangarajah to stay away from his estranged wife and her family for the next three years. He’s forbidden from approaching within 500 metres of her, her residence, work, or any other place he knows her to be. He’s also required to complete any assessments, counselling and rehabilitative programs his probation officer directs, including the Partner Assault Response Program and counselling for alcohol abuse and mental health issues.

The judge noted that materials his counsel supplied to the court indicate that Thangarajah has a chronic alcohol addiction and has struggled for years with depression and suicidal ideation.

syanagisawa@postmedia.com