A 52-year-old man from Uganda who was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman in a staff room at Shoppers Drug Mart was given a suspended sentence on June 12, 2024.
Samson Gebremariam was found guilty after a trial. Court heard that Gebremariam and the victim were both working at the Shoppers Drug Mart the evening of April 26, 2022. He was a janitor and she was a clerk.
“I found that Mr. Gebremariam, a virtual stranger to the complainant, sexually assaulted her in the staff room of that Shoppers Drug Mart at the end of the complainant’s shift that evening, by placing his arm around her shoulders and touching and squeezing-that is, fondling- her breast or breasts, all without her consent,” said Judge J. Ogle in Calgary Provincial Court.
A pre-sentence report revealed that Gebremariam is from Eritrea in Africa, and describes his childhood as normal, stable and enjoyable. He met and married his wife in Eritrea. Once he was age 18, he was required to perform compulsory military service but evaded the draft for many years until he was arrested by the military police and imprisoned. He escaped from prison, and made his way to Sudan, where his wife and their then two children joined him. They attained refugee status in Sudan and lived there and in neighbouring South Sudan, and Uganda, for approximately 10 years before eventually emigrating to Canada, where he and his family obtained Permanent Resident Status in Canada in 2017.
Gebremariam was fired from his job as a custodian at Shoppers Drug Mart as a result of this offence. He is now employed as an assembler for a Building Products company, as well as doing part-time custodial work with his brother-in-law’s cleaning company.
Judge Ogle said that having been found guilty, Gebremariam has not expressed any remorse nor accepted any responsibility for his crime.
“There is no ‘room’ on the facts of this case to suggest that any words or actions of the victim were somehow ‘misinterpreted’ by Mr. Gebremariam, suggesting somehow to him that it was ‘OK’ for him to fondle her as he did,” said Judge Ogle. “The facts as I have found them indicate that Mr. Gebremariam was entirely uncaring about how his uninvited advances would impact his much younger victim. His unwanted hugging of the victim, followed by fondling of the complainant’s breast or breasts, were brazen actions that significantly affected the victim’s sense of security and dignity.”
Gebremariam was given a suspended sentence and 18 months probation. He was also ordered to provide his DNA.
