From the Courts - Wife Beater Sentenced

As reported by the Herald's Steve Bruce

A Dartmouth man has been given 14 months in jail for abusing his wife three times in less than a year.

Eudy Tavera-Gonzalez, 41, a landed immigrant from Cuba, was sentenced last week in Dartmouth provincial court.

In August 2008, Tavera-Gonzalez uttered threats to his wife Sherry and made threatening remarks about her brother. He pleaded guilty to those charges last September.

But Tavera-Gonzalez opted to go to trial on two other sets of charges.

Judge Flora Buchan convicted him earlier this month of assault causing bodily harm and breaching release conditions, stemming from a beating in December 2008 that left his wife with a broken arm.

He was also found guilty of five charges from an attack last April: two counts of assault with a weapon and single counts of assault, uttering threats and breaching release conditions. His weapons of choice were a knife and a stick.

Tavera-Gonzalez, of Brule Street, was denied bail after his arrest last April and has been in custody at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth.

At sentencing, Crown attorney Cheryl Byard argued for a five-year prison term on top of the almost 11 months Tavera-Gonzalez spent on remand.

Byard pointed out that Tavera-Gonzalez had been charged with abusing his wife before.

The couple were married in Cuba in 1999 and Tavera-Gonzalez came to Canada in March 2001. That September, he received a one-year conditional sentence for two counts of assaulting his wife with a weapon and one of threatening her.

In 2005, he was again charged with threatening and assaulting her, but she recanted and he agreed to sign a peace bond.

Byard urged the judge to send a message to Tavera-Gonzalez that this type of behaviour is not tolerated in Canada.

Defence lawyer Pat Atherton requested a sentence of between one and two years, minus the customary double credit for remand time. That essentially would have seen Tavera-Gonzalez sentenced to time served.

Buchan ended up sentencing the wife-beater to an additional 14 months behind bars, to be followed by three years of probation.

“There's certainly a progression of violence and intimidation,” the judge said of Tavera-Gonzalez's conduct.

Buchan ordered him to undergo counselling for mental health issues, alcohol abuse, anger management and violence intervention and prevention as directed by his probation officer, and to have no contact with his wife.

In her victim impact statement, Sherry Tavera-Gonzalez said she doesn't know why she put up with the abuse for so long.

“I don't know if I will ever understand how I could have kept everything a secret, how I could smile and pretend that I wasn't suffering,” she wrote. “I strive to understand why I stayed. What part of me was so broken that I was able to believe that any part of what I experienced was acceptable? My counselling will not end until I can identify it and heal it.

“I have been diagnosed with battered woman's syndrome and know that I will overcome it some day. But I also have learned that I will always be affected in some way by the crime. I have been changed forever. It is up to me to overcome the challenges.

“Among the many lessons I have learned through counselling (is that) I deserve and have a basic human right to a happy, healthy and safe life. I am working hard to achieve this. ... I will have my life back.”