A retired engineer has been handed a three-year prison sentence for a May 2022 domestic assault on his terminally ill common-law partner that took place at the Barrie home they shared.
Chandreka Ballmick, 63, showed no emotion as Justice Jodie-Lynn Waddilove passed sentence on Monday, after finding him guilty on four charges that included forcible confinement and assault with a weapon.
“Intimate partner violence in all forms is disturbing,” Waddilove said in passing sentence, which was the maximum the Crown had sought.
The details of the case are disturbing, but all too familiar in those involving intimate partner violence.
Court heard Ballmick became angered because the victim, who is now in the end stages of her illness and near death, had allowed her nephew to stay overnight at the residence.
According to the statement she eventually gave to police, and which was entered as evidence during the trial, she woke up in the wee hours of the morning and was handcuffed to a fixed object in the home. She was then beaten with particle board wielded by Ballmick.
Court heard the injuries she suffered included two fractured ribs, as well as cuts, bruises and abrasions all over her body.
The assault was revealed after a 911 call was placed, but no one spoke when the operator answered.
A Barrie police officer attended the scene and observed evidence of an assault on the victim’s hands and wrists.
Another call placed later that morning led to a more detailed accounting of the assault and the injuries the woman had sustained.
“(Ballmick’s) actions were violent and deliberate,” said Waddilove.
The judge was also particularly concerned with the delay and original denial of treatment immediately after the assault took place, and the fact the victim didn’t receive care until much later in hospital.
Ballmick, who did not speak at Monday’s proceedings, had asked for an absolute discharge.
Waddilove said that was “effectively no sentence,” while rejecting his plea for mercy, and instead passed one entirely in line with the three years proposed by Crown attorney Julie Janiuk.
“There are no mitigating factors,” Waddilove said, pointing out Ballmick engaged in no pre-sentencing activities, programs or reporting that tend to lessen penalties passed on criminal defendants who have been found guilty.
In another hallmark of domestic-abuse cases, the victim recanted her original statement at trial, saying instead that she applied the handcuffs herself and then fell down stairs that resulted in her injuries.
Waddilove rejected that evidence as illogical in finding Ballmick guilty and repeated it again in passing sentence.
“I found her injuries were alarming ... The photographs are clear and consistent with her original statement,” the judge said.
Waddilove also imposed a lifetime weapons ban and a no-contact order and compelled Ballmick to provide a sample of his DNA for the national database.
He was credited for 10 days already served, which was enhanced to 15 according to pre-trial custody guidelines.
After becoming aware there was no officer in the court to take Ballmick into custody, the judge ordered that a bailiff be called to take him to jail.
With the court recessed, an officer placed handcuffs on Ballmick’s wrists and led him away into custody.
