By Cassandra Drudi, The Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA, CANADA – An Ethiopian refugee was sentenced to five years in prison yesterday for a 2006 sexual assault against a Nunavut woman in Ottawa.

The woman had asked strangers for a ride to her hotel from the ByWard Market and ended up being attacked in the bathroom of a rooming house.

“This is intended to send a strong message of denunciation in respect of this violent and opportunistic crime against a vulnerable visitor to our community,” said Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland, reading from his four-page sentencing decision.

Gideon George Antonatos, 24, has six more months of the five-year sentence to serve. He received two-for-one credit for the 27 months he has already spent in custody.

Judge Hackland also sentenced Mr. Antonatos to three years of probation following his prison sentence.

“Mr. Antonatos has shown little remorse,” the judge said. “The sentencing objectives of denunciation and deterrence are paramount in this case, although I do allow that rehabilitation remains a goal, given Mr. Antonatos’s age of 24 and lack of previous history of sexual offences.”

Mr. Antonatos, a convention refugee from Ethiopia who came to Canada in 2000, is also subject to a deportation order.

Mr. Antonatos was found guilty of sexual assault causing bodily harm in July, following his second trial on the charges.

The first ended in a mistrial when a jury couldn’t come to a consensus on whether he had raped the woman, as she claimed.

The second trial ran into trouble in April, when the distraught victim refused to answer any more of the prosecutor’s questions about the sexual assault. After dismissing the jury, Judge Hackland allowed the trial to proceed by judge only, relying on the woman’s testimony from the first trial.

At a sentencing hearing last month, assistant Crown attorney Walter Devenz said the February 2006 rape of the 26-year-old woman in the basement of a Lowertown rooming house by Mr. Antonatos and two other still-unidentified men was an “egregious and animalistic” act.

The woman, who was in Ottawa attending a workshop, had been drinking at a ByWard Market bar with a friend and then was unable to get a cab. She accepted a ride with the three men, including Mr. Antonatos.

Instead of taking her to her hotel, they went to a Bruyère Street rooming house where she was sexually assaulted after making attempts to escape.