A Yukoner convicted of drugging and raping an ex-girlfriend while her daughter slept in the next room has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Billy Field, 38, was found guilty last month of slipping the sleep-disorder drug Zopiclone into his ex-girlfriend’s glass of red wine as they socialized at her house in October 2008.
After hearing testimony from Field, his victim and the victim’s daughter, who remains traumatized by the evening according to her mother, a jury found Field guilty of using a stupefying drug with the intent of assault as well as sexual assault.
On Monday, Justice Leigh Gower ruled Field should serve three years concurrently for each charge.
“He took away control over my mind, my body and house that night,” said the victim in her impact statement. “He gave me no choice and he didn’t care how it would affect my daughter.”
The incident occurred October 25, 2008, after the woman invited Field to her house to drink and watch movies.
While she left the living room to go the washroom, he slipped in an amount of Zopiclone which investigators later detected in a toxicology test.
The drug reduces manual dexterity and makes it difficult to walk or stand up. It also clouds memories.
The victim didn’t remember finishing the wine, she said in her testimony. She woke up the next morning on her back with her robe open, she said.
Her daughter testified that she heard crashing and yelling during the night while she lay in her mother’s bed. Field and the mother remained mostly in the living area.
At one point, the daughter described her shock at seeing her mother in a weird state and couldn’t understand why she was walking around the house naked.
Field argued the sex was consensual and estimated they had intercourse between four and fives times, he said during his testimony.
Gower received two letters to consider in his sentencing; one from Tr’ondek Hwech’in Chief Eddie Taylor, whose First Nation Field belongs to, and one from Field’s mother, whom he still takes care of in Whitehorse.
Field had kept a steady job his whole life and had only two criminal convictions on his record.
The maximum sentence for administrating a stupefying drug is life imprisonment.
The victim described how she feared Field during the time leading up the trial and that her daughter’s innocence was stolen that night.
The daughter remains very untrustworthy of any males who enter the home, the victim impact statement said.
After considering all the evidence, Gower decide that three years was sufficient.
Field has two daughters from another relationship who are cared for by foster parents.
He will serve his time either at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre or at a federal penitentiary in British Columbia.
He will also be registered as a sex offender in the national database.
Contact James Munson at
jamesm@yukon-news.com.