‘I wallow in the shame of my actions’

A Whitehorse man convicted of two violent rapes has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

A Whitehorse man convicted of two violent rapes has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Douglas Hockley pleaded guilty to one of the attacks last year and was found guilty after trial for one he committed a month before his arrest.

He has been in jail for almost three years while his case has moved through the courts.

On the night of Oct. 30, 2007, Hockley broke into a home near his parents’ Ibex Valley house by smashing a window.

The home’s lone female resident awoke to the sound and turned on her bedroom light.

When Hockley entered the room, she saw he was wearing bright yellow rubber gloves and a mask which covered his entire face and made him look “Halloweenish”.

Had he not been wearing the mask, the woman would have recognized her 23-year-old attacker – he had known her when he was a teenager, although not well.

From the small amount of skin she could see within the eye holes, she was able to tell the RCMP that her attacker was caucasian.

Hockley flicked off the light and pinned the woman down by her throat.

He proceeded to rape her several times, forcing her body into positions that have left her with back and neck injuries which remain to this day.

At one point, her told her, “If you bite me, I will kill you. I mean it – I will kill you.”

The woman later told police she did not fight her attacker because she was sure he would carry through on his threat.

Hockley left the house on foot and the woman immediately called police.

Officers arrived and put the canine team on the rapist’s trail. The sniffer dog led investigators to Hockley’s house. There, police found an abundance of evidence, including the mask and clothing which bore traces of the woman’s DNA.

Hockley was arrested.

In the days following, he was charged with another rape, this time of a woman who was attacked while walking through a Riverdale greenbelt a month previous to the Ibex Valley rape.

He pleaded not guilty, and at trial claimed the woman had traded sex for crack. He also admitted to being a drug dealer and addict.

For her part, the woman said Hockley stopped her on the trail and started up a conversation. When she turned to walk away, he pushed her down and violently raped her.

Supreme Court Justice Ron Veale found Hockley guilty in October 2009. He has remained in jail since, awaiting sentencing.

Hockley’s lawyer and Crown prosecutor John Phelps came to an agreement on sentencing, and on Friday afternoon appeared before Veale with a joint submission.

They advised Veale to give Hockley four years for the Riverdale rape and eight years for the home invasion rape.

They also recommended he be labelled a long-time offender. That means he will be supervised for up to 10 years after his release.

Phelps noted that a 10-year term is the maximum, and that Hockley may be allowed out on parole before his sentence is up.

“That’s up to him and how he performs in the federal penitentiary system,” he said.

So far, Hockley has not performed well in the territorial jail system.

A letter from a corrections official noted the 25-year-old man has more than 200 negative report notes on his file.

He has been found guilty of 43 internal offences at the jail, including assaults against corrections officers and inmates and running contraband.

In his first year and a half he spent behind bars, Hockley would throw tantrums and was a regular guest in the segregation cells.

“Mr. Hockley has been one of the most difficult inmates at Whitehorse Correctional Centre in recent memory,” the official wrote.

Hockley himself spoke to the court Friday, and admitted he has behaved badly in jail.

He apologized to the Ibex Valley woman, though notably not the Riverdale victim, and said he prayed for her every day.

“I wallow in the shame of my actions,” he said.

“... I need you to know this person is not me; it once was, but it is not anymore.”

He promised to “wholeheartedly embrace” anger management and drug rehabilitation programming while in prison.

Veale accepted the joint submission on sentencing, although he seemed dissatisfied with both lawyers’ explanations of why Hockley should be given extra credit for his time served.

It would be highly irregular, however, for a judge to go against both sides’ recommendations, so he ultimately gave Hockley 1.5 times credit for his time served, leaving him with a sentence of approximately 7 1/2 years.