A 34-year-old man was sentenced to eight months in jail last Wednesday for sexually touching a young girl.

Territorial judge John Faulkner put in place a number of conditions to restrict the man’s interactions with children under the age of 16 for the next seven years after his release.

The man will be barred from going to public parks and public swimming areas where persons under the age of 16 are present or can be expected to be present, daycare centres, schoolgrounds, playgrounds and community centres.

That specifically includes the Canada Games Centre, where the assault took place.

He will be banned from any job or volunteer position that would put him in a position of trust or authority over children under the age of 16.

On top of that, he will be barred from having any contact with children under the age of 16 for two years following his release from jail, as part of his probation conditions.

A no-contact order will forbid him from being within two kilometres of the victim.

A publication ban prohibits disclosing any details that could identify the victim.

Because the victim is a family friend of the offender, the Star isn’t publishing his name either.

The judge followed the joint submission for sentencing put forward by the Crown and the defence.

Prosecutor Leo Lane told the court about the sexual touching the man committed.

Sometime in 2014, the man and the victim, a friend of his nieces, were at the Canada Game Centre.

They were playing tag, and the man tagged her in the genital area, over her swimsuit.

In the spring of 2015, the man was with the girl when he pulled her shirt down and reached “as he was trying to touch her breast,” Lane told the court.

The girl left before he could touch her.

The girl’s mother filed a victim impact statement to the court.

In it, she spoke about the negative impact the assault had on her daughter, Lane told the court.

“She is fearful around older men,” he said, reading her letter.

The Crown and defence emphasized that the man had pleaded guilty early on, sparing the victim from having to testify in a trial.

Lane also told the court that the Crown only had an audio recording of the victim, and that there was little evidence to corroborate her testimony.

The plea allowed the Crown to avoid the challenges of proving the man had committed the crimes, he said.

The man has a criminal record with three convictions for violence and one for sexual interference, the same charge he was being sentenced for last week.

Because that previous sexual offence conviction is related to an offence that happened between the 2014 and 2015 offences, it can’t be considered re-offending, which would have allowed for a stiffer sentence.

When the man’s sentencing for that previous offence was over, Whitehorse RCMP arrested him again, this time on the two counts of sexual interference.

It’s not clear why police couldn’t have amalgamated all the charges into one file more than a year ago.

In the previous case, the man had forced a 12-year-old girl’s leg open and taken pictures of her crotch. She was wearing tights at the time.

He received a 90-day sentence and one year probation for that crime.

While it wasn’t an excuse for the crimes he committed, defence lawyer David Christie, noted his client’s family had been largely impacted by residential schools.

The man has two children. Their grandmother is taking care of them.

The man will have employment upon his release, Christie told the court.

He will be on the sex offenders registry for life.

With credit for time served while on remand, the man has 138 days left to serve at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre.