An appeal court in Alberta has nearly doubled the sentence for a man who cut off a woman’s finger and then forced her to eat her own severed digit, saying in a ruling that the original judge downplayed the victim’s suffering and terror.

Stephen Ralph Potts was convicted of aggravated assault after inviting an Indigenous woman to his home in the northern community of Chateh and attacking her in April 2024.

Court heard during trial that Potts, who is also Indigenous, punched the woman repeatedly in the face without warning or provocation, breaking bones. He then ordered her to splay out her fingers, saying he was going to cut off her finger. 

When she relented, he severed the upper joint in her pinky and then made her eat it.

“The events were so terrorizing, the complainant soiled her pants. When she was finally able to leave the respondent’s residence later that morning, she was rushed to a hospital for surgery to repair her broken jaw and facial fractures,” an Appeal Court ruling from earlier this week stated.

The ruling, which does not name the woman, said that when it came time to hear her victim impact statement during sentencing, it couldn’t be found, and Justice G.R. Ambrose proceeded without it and sentenced Potts to four years.

The Appeal Court called that sentence “demonstrably unfit” and imposed a new sentence of 7 1/2 years, saying the attack on the “vulnerable Indigenous woman” by Potts was “one of abject degradation.”

“In her victim impact statement, the complainant described the emotional, physical and economic impact the assault had on her life, and her lasting pain and fear,” the Appeal Court ruling stated.

“Proceeding without the victim impact statement in these circumstances was an error in principle that affected the sentence imposed.”

The ruling said the trial judge commented that he himself had lost the tip of his pinky finger in early adulthood, which he said had not interfered with anything he “wanted to do, nor did it cause (him) emotional distress.” The judge also found that the loss of a pinky finger was not “life-threatening, or life-altering … or even a serious disfigurement.”

Further, it said the judge found that the complainant had led a “hardscrabble life,” often appearing in court, so therefore it couldn’t be determined that the harm she suffered from the assault was “life-altering.”

Her statement was located several weeks after the original sentence was imposed.

In it, the woman said she would never forget what happened with her finger. She said she had plates in her face as a result of the attack, was still in pain and couldn’t chew solid foods.

“I have been in and out of the hospital since the event. Life traumatizing – (swallowing) your own finger,” she said.

She also drew pictures of a broken heart, a face crying, a face with “PAIN” in her head, and a sad face with the words “Never be the same.”

The Appeal Court said the trial judge should have adjourned the sentencing hearing in order to locate the victim’s statement, saying its contents “would have established the trauma and pain inflicted on the complainant.”

“When a sentencing court proceeds without considering a duly filed but misplaced Victim Impact Statement, or worse, diminishes the harm suffered based on the victim’s ‘character’ — where the only reasonable inference from the circumstances of the offence is that the harm suffered is devastating – a clear error occurs warranting appellate intervention,” the Appeal Court ruling said.