Prostitute Pays The Piper

[Guest N***he**Ont**y]

A Greater Sudbury prostitute who bilked an elderly man out of $100,000 -- leaving him so broke he could not afford to have his late wife's name engraved on her headstone -- won't be going to jail.

Instead, Marjorie Sirvage will serve a two-year conditional sentence, a Sudbury judge ruled Thursday.

"I feel Marjorie Sirvage is a good candidate for a conditional sentence," Superior Court Justice Patricia Hennessy said. "Miss Sirvage needs significant resources to help her deal with her mental health issues. These will be more accessible to her in the community than in an institution.

"I am also satisfied there will be no danger to community safety if she serves her sentence in the community."

Sirvage will serve a year of house arrest and then abide by a curfew in the second year of her conditional sentence.

She will then be put on three years of probation, which includes the condition no male is allowed in her apartment without prior approval of her probation officer.

Hennessy also issued a stand-alone restitution order for $9,000, with a minimum $20 to be repaid monthly to the victim (Sirvage has already provided $1,000), and ordered Sirvage to provide a sample to the national DNA databank.

Court was told Sirvage was paid $3,000 for her sexual services, received $87,000 in assistance and loans to help with fake medical crises and trips, and extorted another $10,000 from the victim, a man who was then in his late 80s.

Sirvage, 44, pleaded guilty March 12 to extortion and a pre-sentence report was ordered. Sentencing was delayed three weeks because the report did not adequately address mental health and Children's Aid issues in Sirvage's life.

The Crown had been seeking a one-year jail term. Defence lawyer John Saftic had sought a conditional sentence.

After court was closed, assistant Crown attorney Philip Zylberberg said the two-year conditional sentence is still significant, though not hard time.

"It's a serious penalty," he said. "From the Crown's perspective, we thought the penalty should be more severe ... (But) this (sentence) is not just getting your hand slapped."

A tearful Sir vage pleaded with Hennessy not to send her to jail.

"I am very ashamed of what I did," she said. "I want to try and make money to repay (the victim) so he can feel less stressed. I do feel bad for this. I have good opportunities to have mental health therapy. This is hard. I don't want to live my life being unhappy.

"Mr. Zylberberg said I could be a repeat offender. I won't be a repeat offender. I want to go back to school. I've lost a lot in my life. I have two cats. I don't want to lose them next.

"If I'm in jail, how am I supposed to make money to pay (the victim) back. How can I get better? I'm tired of being unhappy. I just want to be happy. I don't know what it's like to be happy. But, I am sorry for what I did."

Saftic told the court that Sirvage, who was abused as a child physically, mentally and sexually, and was raped two decades ago, is the mother of five children, all of whom were removed by the Children's Aid Society. Two of the children were removed at birth.

Sirvage also suffers from a range of mental illnesses, including agoraphobia, panic attacks, personality disorder, anxiety disorder, and schizophrenia. Sirvage is also on a disability pension.

Saftic said the relationship between Sir vage and the elderly man began about four years ago when he replied to an escort service advertisement and began using her services once a month. After 30 months, it had evolved into a friendship, with the man providing money as gifts and loans. The extortion period came last and ended with the man going to police.

Saftic said Sirvage, who has been in and out of mental treatment facilities since the age of 23, has a limited intelligence level and was found by a psychiatrist to be socially inadequate, easily influenced, and chooses boyfriends who are abusive, or have drug and alcohol problems.

In his sentencing submission, Zylberberg said what Sirvage did was tantamount to elder abuse -- taking advantage of a vulnerable, old man who wanted intimacy and fleecing him of his $100,000 in life savings.

"You can't be blackmailed if you don't have a guilty secret," he told the court. "(And) black-ma il is more lucrative than prostitution. It is here. The price of being silenced was greater than the price of sexual services."

In her interview with police, Zylberberg told the court, Sirvage admitted to making up a "whole lot of stupid stuff " in order to get the elderly man to give her money. They included false stories that she need to visit a foster child at Sick Children's Hospital, travelling to Montreal to work in films, and assisting her gravely ill father, who needed blood transfusions.

When that assistance stopped, Zylberberg said extortion letters and phone calls started, causing the elderly man to lose 26 pounds, throw up frequently and be very stressed. Sirvage threatened to tell first the man's wife and, after she died, one of his daughters.

Sirvage even went as far to inform the man that one time, when he thought he was talking on the telephone to her about coming over and cuddling, he was actually talking to her teenage daughter. Sirvage was lying, said Zylberberg.

"Do you think your daughter wants to know you hit on a 16- year-old girl?" Zylberberg said of what Sirvage told the elderly man. "(And) I'm going to tell about the relationship. The time I was asleep, you had sex with me anyway. The time you hit on my daughter. If I don't get money, I'm going to tell your daughter."

Zylberberg said there was an absence of remorse in the presentence report and Sirvage's police interview.

"She tells the police 'it's the wrongest thing I ever did,'" he said. "I will regret it for the rest of my life.' But she uses the incident on the couch as carte blanche to do what she wants. She was sophisticated enough to make up all kinds of stories to (the victim) and sophisticated enough to keep going."

Zylberberg said a good portion of the money Sir vage received went to gambling, a habit that got so out of control it led to a marriage break-up earlier in her life.

The elderly man, now 92, was so financially ruined by Sirvage, said Zylberberg, that he could not afford to do repairs to the home he had built, get a broken television fixed, or have his late wife's headstone engraved.

The man's daughters were also heavily impacted by what happened.

"I am really sad and angry my father has been taken advantage of in such a destructive way," Zylberberg read from one daughter's victim impact statement. "That's what taking advantage of the elderly does."

The elderly man and his accompanying daughter, who attended the sentencing hearing, declined to comment following Hennessy's ruling.

http://www.thesudburystar.com/2012/08/17/prostitute-pays-the-piper

[EmilyRushton 253363]

If this woman could take advantage of a man like this, she has no mental illness - she knew exactly what she was doing. No wonder potential clients are leery of giving information when nut bars like this are in the business.

[Guest N***he**Ont**y]

If you only knew half of what goes around up here with scams and such!

[Andee 220524]

How is she supposed to make money in order to make restitution. No doubt she is probably collecting Ontario Disability because schizoprehenics qualify. Legally, she would only be able to work and earn certain amount of $ before her earnings were deducted from her cheque.

 

So what is she going to do? Resort to some other means to make restitution to avoid going to jail. Doesn't make sense.

 

Being in his 90s now, I doubt this man will ever see his money returned to him before he dies. I hope the judgment is enforced so that his estate can continue to collect after he's gone.

 

I believe the only thing this woman is sorry about is that she got caught. What she did was done with criminal intent.

 

The fact she was an escort is irrelevant. Just another sensationaliststory which reinforces negative stereotypes about the ladies in our industry.

[backrubman 64800]

The fact she was an escort is irrelevant. Just another sensationaliststory which reinforces negative stereotypes about the ladies in our industry.

 

I agree Angela, totally irrelevant that she is an escort as this kind of thing happens all time time but the press don't have any where near as sensational story if they don't take the opportunity to trash escorts.