Uber driver who sexually propositioned teenager convicted.

An Uber driver who held the hand of a teenage passenger without her consent and repeatedly asked her if he could pay her for sex will not go to prison, but will have a criminal record for his actions.

Rabinder Singh Kang, 39, of Surrey, was sentenced to a suspended sentence and two years of probation by Judge Tim Hinkson in North Vancouver Provincial Court on June 14 after pleading guilty to sexual assault.

Hinkson described the attack as a “breach of trust by a professional driver twice her age” that was sexually motivated.

“A young woman boarded an Uber late at night with the expectation of being driven to her destination safely and without fear. She had a right to that expectation,” Hinkson said. “Instead, she was harassed, diverted from her route and ultimately opportunistically attacked by the very person entrusted with that task.”

According to a consistent statement of facts, the incident occurred over three years ago, on January 27, 2021, in North Vancouver.

The teenager, whose identity is unknown, ordered an Uber ride from North Vancouver to a friend in East Vancouver shortly before 1 a.m.

Kang, who had been working as an Uber driver for about a year, picked her up.

When the teenager asked him while driving if he had nicotine, Kang offered to stop and buy some, but she refused.

Nevertheless, the driver drove into a dark street behind a supermarket.

At this point, the teenager began to feel unwell and worried about her safety, the judge said.

Kang asked the teenager if she wanted to sleep with him and offered her money for sex in the car.

She refused and told him that she was not a sex worker.

At this point, the teenager also began secretly recording parts of the conversation with her phone.

After crossing the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, Kang deviated from the route shown on his phone and drove into an area the teenager was unfamiliar with, the judge said. She also noticed that the locks on the doors were controlled by the driver, the statement of facts said.

The teenager told the driver to “just follow the map,” after which he had to turn around to get back on route.

Kang again asked the teenager to have sex with him and added: “If you don’t like it, it will only take two to three minutes.”

He asked if he could park somewhere else and again offered to pay for sex.

While they were parked on an unidentified residential street, Kang turned around, grabbed the teenager’s hand and began rubbing it with his thumb, the judge said.

The teenager was paralyzed with fear and did not pull her hand back for fear that the situation might escalate.

After 19 minutes in the car, he finally dropped her off at her destination and asked her for her phone number, which the young woman did not give him.

While Kang never made any explicit threatening gestures, Hinkson described the atmosphere in the Uber to a passenger who had deviated from his route twice as “intimidating and frightening.”

The situation is also about a power imbalance and a defenseless victim, he said.

To establish that Kang committed sexual assault, Hinkson said it was not necessary to establish a specific sexual act. The hand-holding occurred despite repeated rejections and was an attempt to create intimacy to encourage Kang’s sexual interest in the teenager, the judge said.

In their victim impact statements, both the teenager and her parents described how the incident left her feeling depressed and anxious, and how she feared that Kang would show up if she ordered an Uber bike.

The judge described Kang, a married man with children, as a permanent resident of Canada who is the sole supporter of his family. After the incident, he was fired from Uber and his income dropped by 50 percent. Friends described the incident as inconsistent with his otherwise good character, the judge said. A pre-sentence report described Kang as remorseful, while a psychiatric report found he was at low risk of reoffending.

The judge said he was nonetheless troubled by Kang’s lack of insight into his behaviour and his “willful blindness”. He had presented alternative versions of events to explain his behaviour, such as holding the teenager’s hand to “express sympathy”, mistaking her for a sex worker and saying she initiated the conversation about sex.

The prosecution asked for a prison sentence of between four and a half and five months, followed by 12 months probation, while the defense asked for a conditional release to spare Kang a criminal record.

Hinkson refused both, stating: “Although I have refused a conditional discharge, I do not consider a prison sentence necessary.” Instead, he imposed a suspended sentence with the condition that he not be alone with any girl under the age of 18 (except family members), stay away from the victim and take any therapy ordered.

The judge also ordered that Kang be placed on the sex offenders’ register for a period of ten years.