A man who broke into a family home while under the influence of drugs and alcohol and violently assaulted a father and her teen daughter has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
The correctional court of the Walloon Brabant topped off the prison sentence with a five year period of judicial oversight after finding the man guilty of assault and of sexually abusing his teenage victim.
The assault took place in March when a 35-year-old man, identified as Alexandre T., rung the bell of a home in Braine-l'Alleud, near Nivelles, tricking the residents to allow him inside.
Once in the house, he forced his victims, a father and his 14-year-old daughter, to sit on the couch at gunpoint and blindfolded them using window curtains, RTBF reports.
He threated to cut off his victim's fingers and slit their throats, and banged the father in the head with a glass bottle, as well as subjected them to acts referred to as "humiliating" by local media.
Putting a gun to the man's head, the assailant forced him to make a phone call to cancel his attendance to an event he was expected to attend that evening.
The teen's father seized an opportunity for him and his teen daughter to escape, but the latter one was recaptured by the assailant, who touched her and committed acts labelled as sexual assault by the court.
The convicted man, who was found to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time of the assault, also threatened an officer with a weapon when police arrived at the scene.
He was injured by a projectile shot by the police following numerous warning shots, according to RTBF.
The home invasion took place on the day the assailant, who claims not to remember the incident, was allowed to leave a centre where he was being treated for substance abuse.
Gabriela Galindo
The Brussels Times
