Dartmouth massage therapist sentenced to 4 years for sexual assault

Warning: This story contains distressing details.

A Nova Scotia massage therapist has been sentenced to four years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman he knows.

Trevor Jordan Stevens, 35, was sentenced Friday in Nova Scotia Supreme Court. The attack happened eight years ago in his home in Dartmouth, N.S.

He was charged in 2018 and convicted in August.

Court was told Stevens slapped the woman on the face, covered her nose and mouth with his hand, then pulled down her pants and raped her. During the attack Stevens told the woman that if she kept fighting, he'd hit her again.

She asked him not to hurt her and when she stopped struggling he told her "good girl."

"I now know that there are bad people in the world," the woman wrote in a victim impact statement that was not read in court but was entered in evidence.

Stevens faces other charges

The woman said she suffers from anxiety and feels powerless to stop anyone from doing bad things to her and people she loves.

She wrote she doesn't regret coming forward about the assault, even though it has taken a terrible toll.

"But to pretend that this hasn't completely destroyed not just the last eight years of my life, but my progress and potential future success in life, would be a lie."

Stevens also faces charges related to two complainants who say he sexually assaulted them during massage therapy appointments. Police laid the charges in August.

In Friday's case, Stevens was convicted of four offences: sexual assault, assault, uttering threats to cause bodily harm and choking to facilitate a sexual assault. The assault conviction was stayed because it relied on the same evidence as the sexual assault.

In addition to the prison term, Stevens's DNA is now part of the national database and his name will be on the national sex offender registry for the next 20 years.