Alberta’s top court has increased the sentence of a former club promoter convicted of sexually assaulting five women to 11 years in prison.
Matthew McKnight was sentenced to eight years after he was convicted in 2020 of the assaults that happened in Edmonton between 2010 and 2016.
In a unanimous decision released Wednesday, the panel of three justices said the eight-year sentence “does not adequately send a symbolic, collective statement that (McKnight’s) conduct should be punished for encroaching on our society’s basic code of values.”
Last month, the Crown asked the Court of Appeal of Alberta to sentence McKnight to 15 years, arguing that he was premeditative in offering women free alcohol at the bars where he was working before he assaulted them at his downtown apartment. His victims were between the ages of 18 and 22….