A High River father has been handed a five-year prison sentence and faces deportation to the United States for blindfolding and sexually abusing his seven-year-old stepdaughter numerous times in 2009.

In sentencing the 37-year-old American citizen on Friday, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Patrick Sullivan said the repeated assaults were a breach of his young stepdaughter’s trust.

He said the exact number of sexual assaults on the girl is not known, but the evidence at trial revealed the assaults were numerous.

“The nature of the sexual assaults occurred always in the same fashion. The victim’s eyes would be covered. She was blindfolded and the assaults always occurred in the family home,” said Sullivan.

“There was a degree of opportunistic planning by arranging and conducting the assaults while the mother was absent from the home.”

The sentence was meted out a day after the man was acquitted of all five charges for allegedly bursting into the family home in the face of a restraining order and confining, choking and raping his 30-year-old estranged common-law wife in April 2010 — just months after the child sexual abuse was reported to police.

Sullivan gave the man, the father of his ex-wife’s three youngest daughters, credit for double the two years he spent in custody since his arrest, leaving him 333 days to serve.

He was also ordered to be registered as a sex offender for 20 years.

“As an American citizen, I’m quite certain Canadian Border Services will be watching his progress (in jail),” defence lawyer Jim Lutz said outside court. “That’s likely the process that will be followed.”

Crown prosecutor Sarah Stewart, calling young children among the most vulnerable people in society, had sought a prison sentence of six to seven years for the repeated assaults on the girl.

“The breach of trust was very severe,” she previously told the judge. “He was lying and misleading her. The damage done to this girl needs to be taken seriously.”

Lutz, citing case law, had argued the appropriate sentence for such an offence is four years and that he had already served the equivalent time.

Sullivan had convicted the man on Feb. 10 after a trial for what he called the use of the girl “for sexual gratification.” He said it was repeated sexual manipulation and abuse of his young stepdaughter while she was blindfolded.

The young girl told court that her stepfather repeatedly touched her and had her touch the man she always knew as Daddy in the genital area, always while she was blindfolded, and generally because he said she was bad.

She said he always did it when her mom was not at home and was warned by him not to tell her mother. The girl said the incidents usually happened in the bathroom or on her mom’s bed downstairs.

The incidents occurred between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2009.