Jail time for man guilty of sexual assault at homeless shelter

By Delon Shurtz on May 22, 2021.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDdshurtz@lethbridgeherald.com

A 32-year-old man will spend several weeks in custody for sexually assaulting a woman at the city’s homeless shelter earlier this year.
Matthew Todd Shouting pleaded guilty last week in Lethbridge provincial court to one count of sexual assault and was sentenced to two months in jail.
Court was told Shouting went to the shelter on March 28 and approached a sleeping woman. The woman told shouting to leave her alone but he insisted he only wanted to hug her for body warmth and he climbed under her blanket and began cuddling her from behind.
She told him she didn’t want to be cuddled, but he ran his hands up and down her body, particularly near sensitive areas, and she could feel the front of his body pressing and rubbing against her’s.
“I’m going to assert that all of this touching was done for a sexual purpose,” Crown Prosecutor Clayton Giles said.
Shouting also pleaded guilty to single counts of mischief and breaching release orders, for which he was sentenced to another 15 days and 10 days in jail, respectively. The 10-day sentence will run concurrently with the other sentences.
On March 12 Shouting was at the shelter but was asked to leave because of problems he had caused there in the past. He refused to leave at first, then became angry and damaged an employee’s car by stomping on the hood.
Shouting was subsequently ordered by the court not to return to the shelter, but he did a couple of weeks later when he assaulted the woman.
Lethbridge lawyer Claudia Connolly explained Shouting, who is homeless, was “extremely” intoxicated at the time of his offences.
In addition to his jail sentences, for which he was credited with time served in pre-trial custody, Shouting must register with the Sex Offender Information Registry for 10 years and submit a sample of his DNA for the National DNA Databank. 

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