‘It’s hard to believe that a person could treat another human being that way.”

– Chief Justice Shannon Smallwood

READER CAUTION: This story deals with severe violence against a woman

A man who acted as jailer to a beaten, bleeding, malnourished woman held in a closet for 13 days was sentenced in NWT Supreme Court to five years in prison on Monday.

Tarrin Cheekinew, now 21, had entered a guilty plea one count of unlawful confinement, and will spend the next two years behind bars after accounting for his pre-trial custody.

Chief Justice Shannon Smallwood told court that it’s impossible to know how this situation would have ended, if the RCMP had not found the victim in the closet when they executed a search warrant during a drug investigation.

“Mr. Cheekinew’s willingness to treat another person this way, should cause him to think about the kind of person he is capable of being, and whether that is the type of person he wants to be.

“It is clear he is capable of being a cruel, callous person.”

Smallwood added she considered the May 2023 incident, “one of the most serious circumstances of unlawful confinement.”

The woman had been accused of stealing money, when she was kidnapped in May 2023 from her boyfriend’s apartment in Yellowknife by five males armed with handguns.

Cheekinew did not participate in the initial kidnapping, but was responsible for her confinement.

Court heard she was kept partially dressed, in inhumane conditions and subjected to beatings, deprived of food, and confined to a closet for days at a time, let out only to use the washroom.

“She was traumatized by this experience, physically scarred and psychologically damaged,” said Smallwood. “She’s unable to trust people, and on some days, wishes she was dead.

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“It must have been a terrifying, dehumanizing experience.”

In accepting the joint sentencing recommendation, Smallwood noted the many Gladue factors she needed to tale into consideration in Cheekinew’s upbringing.

They included a family history of attending residential school, substance abuse, loss of family members and food and housing insecurity.

Gladue reports are designed to help sentencing judges consider the systemic and background factors of an offender and look at all available options beyond incarceration.

Smallwood noted Cheekinew came to Yellowknife to sell drugs to make money to support himself and help his father and had no connection to this community.

Cheekinew has been in custody for a significant period of time, “but has not always gone smoothly, and there has been disciplinary problems,” said the judge.

Cheekinew will have to provide a DNA sample for the national crime databank and be subject to a 10-year firearms ban once he is released.

He is also forbidden from contacting the victim while incarcerated.