Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana was arrested Thursday, July 18, and held in jail in Vancouver for breaching conditions of his house arrest.
BC Supreme Court Justice Peter Edelmann ruled June 4 in Powell River that Tyabji-Sandana, 36, must spend the next two years, less a day, at home. A jury found him guilty last fall of sexual interference of a person under 16.
Crown prosecutor Jeffrey Young had asked for a four-to-five year jail sentence. Defence lawyer David Tarnow successfully sought the house arrest sentence, based on Tyabji-Sandana’s Indigenous heritage on his birth father’s side.
During a virtual hearing on Friday afternoon (July 19) through the Port Alberni courthouse, Crown prosecutor Conor Doyle said Tyabji-Sandana had breached his 24-hour curfew and the requirement to not change his address without prior written permission.
Specifically, Tyabji-Sandana called his conditional sentence supervisor on June 11 to say he had left his Vancouver apartment and checked-in to an addiction treatment facility in Surrey on June 10. He planned to stay for 60 days, but left the facility on June 24 and informed the supervisor on June 26.
Doyle told judge Christine Lowe that Tyabji-Sandana’s sexual interference crime occurred in 2016 while he was on bail conditions set by an Alberta judge. That was the result of a 2015 arrest in Calgary when authorities intercepted a package of acetyl fentanyl addressed to him. Tyabji-Sandana pleaded guilty in 2018 to attempting to possess a controlled substance and was sentenced to eight months of house arrest and eight months under curfew.
Tarnow said his client had been under 24-hour lockdown without incident. A girlfriend had helped bring him groceries, but he had failed to convince the supervisor to allow him to work out at a gym once a week.
Tarnow told the judge that Tyabji-Sandana has a history of alcoholism since he was a young teenager. He could not afford the full 60 days of treatment in Surrey and had difficulty contacting the supervisor.
“He should’ve been more careful, your honour, but he wasn’t,” Tarnow said. “It’s somewhat understandable, given the stress he’s been through during the past several months.”
Lowe reiterated Tyabji-Sandana’s house arrest conditions and added a requirement to pay a $1,500 fine should he breach the conditions. She took into account Tyabji-Sandana’s Indigenous heritage and the “unresolved trauma,” but said that there must be complete and absolute compliance with the conditions.
"I’m of the view the accused can be released with respect to this matter,” Lowe said. “I only hope this is a significant warning, very early in this conditional sentence order, and any further breaches of any sort, I think, puts you, Mr. Tyabji-Sandana, at the very real risk of being detained in custody going forward.”
Meanwhile, the BC Prosecution Service filed notice with the court on June 26 to appeal Edelmann’s house arrest sentence. The application claims Edelmann erred in four ways: by opting for house arrest instead of jail, imposing a sentence that is demonstrably unfit, failing to prioritize the sentencing objectives of denunciation and deterrence, and failing to impose a sentence proportionate to the gravity of the offence.
On June 4, Edelmann sentenced Tyabji-Sandana to two years, less a day, of house arrest after Tarnow argued that Tyabji-Sandana qualified for leniency. Tarnow told the judge that Tyabji-Sandana’s biological father is Indigenous and he has suffered intergenerational trauma, poverty and disconnection from his Indigenous roots.
Asked whether the Crown would appeal the sentence, Young referred a reporter to the BCPS communications counsel.
"At this time, the BCPS is carefully reviewing the reasons for sentence,” Damienne Darby said on June 10.
In his oral reasons, Edelmann said Tyabji-Sandana should not be incarcerated because he is not a danger is to anyone.
“By convicting him, society has already stigmatized him as a person who has committed a serious offence and has denounced his offence,” said Edelmann.
In 2016, when he was 28, Tyabji-Sandana had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl. He admitted in court that he did not ask her age. He met the girl after she volunteered to work for high school credits on the farm owned by his mother Judi Tyabji and stepfather Gordon Wilson.
Tyabji and Wilson, formerly married, testified that they assumed the girl was a senior high student.
Edelmann said the stigma, impact of the charges and conviction have been significant for Tyabji-Sandana, because he is a member of a prominent family and studying to become a lawyer.
“The fact that the charges became known at the law school, he was ostracized,” he added. “There's little question his conviction will present a significant impediment to any career he might wish to pursue.”
Tyabji-Sandana must remain in his residence 24 hours per day except with written permission from a conditional sentence supervisor for “employment or other compelling reasons” or for a medical emergency. The judge also ordered that he must: have no direct or indirect contact with the victim; remain in BC; keep the peace, be of good behaviour and appear in front of a judge when requested; provide DNA samples for the national sex offenders’ registry; and have no possession of a firearm for 10 years.
The judge also addressed the victim, who told the court in a June 3 statement that she suffered through shame and embarrassment and feared that she would be blamed if she spoke up.
“I know that this has been a very difficult process,” he said. “In terms of how these processes can take place in a different way are part of discussions that are ongoing; it is something that does need to change in the future.”
Edelmann based the sentence on expert reports, including a Gladue Report anyone who self-identifies as Indigenous can request. Named for a 1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision, the Gladue Report “outlines the unique systemic or background factors which may have played a part in bringing the particular individual before the court,” according to the BC First Nations Justice Council.
In Tyabji-Sandana’s case, it said his maternal grandfather was Metis-Cree and his paternal grandmother, a Metis woman, became an alcoholic after suffering physical and sexual abuse in a residential school.
Tyabji-Sandana learned of his biological father at age 11, but he was not involved in his upbringing. The court heard that he was subject to bullying and racism by his original stepfather and schoolmates in Kelowna. By age 14, he developed a drinking problem.
In 2021, the report said Tyabji-Sandana spent 45 days in a residential recovery facility, had thoughts of suicide and attempted to take his own life by overdosing.
Earlier in the sentencing hearing, Young pleaded with the judge for a jail sentence because Tyabji-Sandana committed sexual interference in Powell River while living under an Alberta judge’s stringent bail conditions.
He was arrested in 2015 in Calgary after a Canada Border Services agent in Vancouver intercepted a package addressed to Tyabji-Sandana that contained 122 grams of acetyl fentanyl, worth an estimated $348,000. Tyabji-Sandana pleaded guilty in 2018 to attempting to possess a controlled substance and was sentenced to eight months of house arrest and eight months under curfew.
Tyabji-Sandana made a brief statement of remorse to the court, telling Edelmann that he would do whatever he could to improve his life.
“There are no winners in this circumstance,” said Tyabji-Sandana. “Sorry, I thought I had more articulate words to say, but at the end of the day I want it to be made right, I want her to live her best life and I am so profoundly sorry for the man-child that I once was to have operated in a wanton, selfish and reckless fashion.”
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