The repeat offender charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a washroom this week was on probation at the time of the offence for another sexual assault.
According to court records, John Frederick Field was sentenced to three months in prison last September, the latest in a long string of convictions on the 62-year-old’s records dating back to his time as a young offender.
The judge who sentenced Field at the time noted that he had been assessed for a possible dangerous or long-term offender application, but Crown prosecutors elected not to pursue a designation that would have seen him locked up indefinitely.
Field is now in custody again — charged in a string of violent incidents that allegedly began with an attack on a 58-year-old woman as she left a medical appointment Wednesday and culminating in an alleged sexual assault of a teenager in a bathroom in the same building minutes later.
A bail hearing is scheduled for June 12.
‘Unlikely to change’
The last time Field appeared before a judge was in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver last September, where Justice Geoffrey Gomery sentenced him for an incident in February 2023 in which he sexually assaulted a hospital medical technician who was testing his heart.
Field’s actual sentence was 30 months, but he was given advanced credit for the year-and-a-half he had already spent in custody awaiting trial, meaning he only had three months and a day left to serve.
In his judgment, Gomery cited a forensic psychological assessment of Field, who suffered a fractured skull and traumatic brain injury at the hands of his father when he was two years old and has completed five separate stretches in federal prisons.
“Mr. Field has been diagnosed with a personality disorder which is unlikely to change. His dislike of authority and externalization of responsibility for his actions worsens his likelihood to change,” the assessment read.
“Mr. Field’s history demonstrates a number of factors that raise significant concern regarding his amenability and responsiveness to future treatment and rehabilitation. Mr. Field has been institutionalized since age 15. This institutionalization has become entrenched over the years.”
An alleged ‘crime spree’
Wednesday’s alleged assault was part of what Vancouver police called a “crime spree” that included the two assaults and a bank robbery. All of the alleged crimes occurred at an office building at Cambie Street and West 41st Avenue, near Oakridge Centre.
Police say the 58-year-old was leaving a medical appointment around 5:15 p.m. when a man allegedly grabbed and assaulted her. She screamed and managed to get away without serious injury.
Minutes later, the 14-year-old girl was using a public washroom in the building when she was allegedly sexually assaulted and forcibly confined by a stranger armed with a knife.
The suspect then escaped after another person tried to enter the washroom, say police, and he then entered a bank on the ground floor of the building and allegedly robbed it.
He was taken into custody around 5:40 p.m.
‘He failed to learn’
When he sentenced Field last September, Gomery noted that he sexually assaulted the medical technician in 2023 while on parole from the 18-month sentence he received for a similar sexual assault in 2018 on another healthcare worker.
Field was convicted of sexual assault, break and enter, and robbery and theft for the earlier offence.
“Mr. Field’s psychological deficits mitigate his moral culpability, but only to a degree,” the judge said.
“The fact remains that he failed to learn from his 2020 conviction for sexually assaulting a healthcare worker and sexually assaulted (his next victim) when he had not yet fully served his sentence for the previous assault.”
While he was serving his previous sentence, Field was subject to a Canada-wide warrant in 2022 when he failed to return to a halfway house after receiving statutory release from the maximum-security Kent Institution in Agassiz, B.C.
At the time, VPD deemed him a “high-risk sex offender” and a significant risk to the public. He was arrested four days later by Surrey RCMP.
In an interview late Friday, B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma said she was shocked by the attack and concerned about Field’s history as a repeat offender.
“It’s a horrific and really tragic incident and I think all of our hearts are going out to the victims and … the young girl especially,” she said.
Every time something like this happens, Sharma said, it’s “my job to understand what was wrong with the system that led to it, and that’s certainly something that I’ll do.”
Sharma said she believes the Criminal Code needs to be changed to address the issue of people who repeatedly show a lack of respect for the law by breaching court orders.
VPD is asking anyone with information about the alleged incidents on Wednesday to call 604-717-0602.
