Woman horrified attacker is free on bail - CNEWS

Jimmy Jorgge is out on bail after serving just 6 months of 4-year sentence. (File photo)

TORONTO - It is a wonder these women ever come forward at all.

They are victims of a vicious assault. They then must face the intrusion of a police and medical investigation, the humiliation and agony of a trial, the reliving of the most painful episode in their lives.

This endless ordeal can stretch on for more than two years. But after enduring it all, rape victims have the right to assume that the justice system will do its part. And so she did. She naively assumed that the man finally convicted of slipping her a date rape drug and attacking her would remain behind bars.

But she was wrong.

She has just learned that Jimmy Jorgge was released from prison and is now free on bail pending his appeal more than a year away. And understandably, she is shaking with outrage.

"I'm furious, I'm just astounded this is even possible that a registered sex offender sentenced to four years can be out in less than six months," the teacher says as her twins cry in the background. "I thought there was justice but it's just on paper."

Jorgge, 39, was convicted last December of drugging and sexually assaulting her on their first date. The former Etobicoke computer technician had met her over Lavalife, the online dating website, and had spent months courting her. She was 36, someone the judge would call "a strong, mature woman" and she wasn't about to rush into a relationship with a stranger.

The bachelor was certainly a player. On his Facebook page at the time, most of his 200 friends were women, and his favourite quote was one by Carl Jung: "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: If there is any reaction, both are transformed."

She finally agreed to meet him in a public place on July 17, 2008. They then went to Jorgge's nearby condo so she could use the washroom.

A mistake? In retrospect, of course. But that in no way excuses what happened next.

When she emerged from the bathroom, Jorgge offered her a glass of wine. She had already told him that she wasn't going to sleep with him until they'd established a relationship.

But it seems he wasn't willing to wait.

Almost immediately after sipping her drink, she began feeling as if she couldn't move or speak. Justice Janet Wilson would accept her testimony that she found herself on his bed, fully clothed and unconscious either sleeping or passed out -- when Jorgge assaulted her.

"She was lying face down, her eyes closed, inert and she didn't reciprocate in any way to his sexual advances. It cannot be reasonably interpreted as an initiation to sexual contact," the judge noted.

During the trial, as in so many that deal with sexual assault, Jorgge tried to paint his victim as the aggressor and the sex they had as consensual.

Wilson rejected his claims.

Jorgge, she said, knew full well his victim "wasn't consenting to unprotected sex with a virtual stranger."

In March, he was sentenced to four years and had to bid goodbye to the wife and baby he'd gained while out on bail. Now, less than six months later, he is free while he waits for his case to be heard by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

"It's been three years. I thought I had finally closed the book on it," his victim says. Now it is back to torment her again.

Why is this registered sex offender entitled to this furlough from punishment, a free pass, as he tries to argue that his conviction was a mistake.

"He has no remorse to this day. He doesn't think he did anything wrong," she says.

Her voice trembles with her utter frustration and weariness with a system that lets her down at every turn.

"Let the public know how unbelievably discouraging this is for victims of sexual assault," she says. "No wonder it is the most under-reported crime in our society. My efforts to hold this man accountable for the crime he committed have been drawn out, exhausting and utterly futile."