BARRE — Calling his conduct “egregious” and his attempts at justifying it “ludicrous,” a Vermont judge sentenced a former IT worker at a Northfield school to time behind bars on charges that he cyberstalked a 13-year-old student at the school and sent her an explicit image.
The prosecutor argued during the hearing Tuesday in Washington County Superior criminal court that Phillip Benoit should serve eight months in jail, the maximum allowed under a plea deal, while his attorney sought a sentence that included no incarceration.
Judge Mary Morrissey sided with the prosecutor, requiring the 35-year-old Benoit to serve eight months behind bars. And when Benoit’s lawyer asked for a two-week stay in the sentence to allow his client time to report to jail, the judge rejected the request.
“The sentence begins right now,” Morrissey said, and Benoit was then taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs to begin serving his sentence.
Moments earlier, the judge delivered strong words to Benoit and the affect his actions had on the girl, who was 13 at the time and a student at Northfield Middle & High School.
“All children deserve to be safe in their schools,” Morrissey said. “School should be the place they can go and they should feel safe and they should not have to feel afraid for their physical safety.”
The judge added, “(The girl) should have been allowed to just be a kid, and that did not happen. Mr. Benoit took that away from her.”
Morrissey said Benoit was employed in the information technology department at the school for several years when he started sending Facebook messages using a fake name to the girl over roughly two weeks in 2017.
Morrissey said those messages made it clear to the girl that he knew who she was and what she was doing, but the girl had no idea who he was. The messages sent to the girl were sexually explicit and contained an indecent image.
And because the girl didn’t initially know who at the school who was sending the messages until Benoit was arrested, the judge said the student was forced to constantly be looking over her shoulder and couldn’t trust any male staff members there.
“The impact on (the girl) is significant when you look at the defendant’s actions,” Morrissey said.
Morrissey, in imposing the sentence, took issue with Benoit’s claim that the girl didn’t have to communicate with him if she didn’t want to, and that his actions in communicating with the girl were done to help show her the dangers of the internet.
“Some of these excuses, mininizations, victim-blaming really do sort of border on defying common sense and border on ludicrous,” the judge said.
“‘The court finds,” Morrissey added, “this to be egregious conduct by Mr. Benoit, in cloaking himself in sort of anonymity that Facebook can provide and targeting and stalking a child at school.”
An investigation by the Northfield Police Department traced the IP address to Benoit.
Benoit no longer works at the school. His attorney, Michael Shane, told the judge that Benoit now is employed at a farm as a harvester.
The hearing Tuesday featured a great deal of testimony and arguments from the attorneys over what level of risk Benoit posed to reoffend.
“There’s no doubt in the court’s mind there is risk to the community,” the judge said in handing down the sentence.
Shane, Benoit’s attorney, had asked the judge during the hearing to consider home confinement for his client, who he said had no prior criminal record and had a steady work history though he will never be able to work in a school again.
“What we don’t want to do is throw roadblocks in the way of success at treatment,” Shane said.
“What I think is most important from our perspective, from the defense, is to set him up for success, to keep his employment going, to keep him connected with his social structure,” Shane said. “That’s what’s going to be good for everybody, the state of Vermont as well.”
Benoit had earlier pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of sending an indecent image to a minor and felony counts of aggravated stalking of a person under 16 and attempted to lure a child.
A plea deal called for a total sentence on all the charges of two to five years in jail, all suspended on probation except eight months to serve in jail. However, Benoit’s attorney was free at the sentencing hearing Tuesday to argue for lesser jail time.
Also, as part of the plea agreement, the attempted luring of a child charge can be cleared from Benoit’s record if he abides by the conditions of his probation for three years.
Those conditions include limiting his contact with minors as well as the internet and completing sex offender treatment.
Washington County State’s Attorney Rory Thibault, the prosecutor, said after hearing he was satisfied with the judge’s decision to impose the maximum jail time under the plea agreement.
The plea deal was reached, Thibault said, to ensure that the girl did not have testify either during a deposition or later at a trial.
“Could there be a greater punitive response? Certainly, but the fact that there is a punitive response and he’ll be deprived of liberty for eight months assured under the agreement does have a deterrent effect,” he said.
The prosecutor added that the plea deal strikes a balance between public safety and rehabilitation.
“No matter how long of a jail sentence,” Thibault said, “Mr. Benoit would return at some point to the community, attempting to do that under the most controlled circumstances is important.”
Benoit addressed the judge Tuesday, saying that he apologized for his actions and looked forward to counseling so he could learn how to better communicate with children.
“I’m sorry,” he added.
The girl’s mother spoke in court, telling the judge what Benoit’s actions had done to her family.
“I sent my daughter to school thinking that she would be safe, schools are supposed to be safe,” the mother said. “My daughter was taken from me, not in a physical way, but my baby girl was taken emotionally.”
The girl, the mother said, has to sleep with a light on, deals with anxiety, and has had to switch schools.
A statement from the girl was also read by a victim advocate. The girl, according to the statement, felt like there was a “bad person” around every corner and she didn’t know who to trust when she was being stalked.
“No one should have to feel this way,” the girl’s statement read. “I should have a chance to just be a kid, instead I was worried about someone stalking me.”
