A Longueuil woman who threw boiling water on a 10-year-old boy playing a doorbell prank was sentenced Wednesday to 27 months in prison. Stéphanie Borel, 47, had pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. The boy suffered second-degree burns, and his identity is protected by a publication ban.
Twenty-seven months, on a joint recommendation
Stéphanie Borel was sentenced at the Longueuil courthouse on Wednesday to 27 months in prison. Quebec court Judge Marc Antoine Carette agreed with a joint recommendation presented by the Crown and the defence in determining her sentence.
Borel, 47, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault last September in connection with the incident on Oct. 2, 2024. Going into the hearing, the Crown prosecutor had been expected to argue for jail time; the joint submission settled the question, and the judge accepted it. Joint recommendations carry significant weight in Canadian sentencing law — judges are expected to accept them unless the proposed sentence would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.
A prank, and a kettle of boiling water
According to an agreed statement of facts, Borel lived near the boy’s elementary school in Longueuil, on Montreal’s South Shore, and had grown fed up after children from the school spent months ringing her doorbell as part of a “ring-and-run” game.
On Oct. 2, 2024, the boy was walking home from school with friends and took a shortcut that passed in front of Borel’s residence. He was approaching her door to ring and run when, before he had the chance, she opened the door, threw boiling water on him and said, in French, “It’s hot, isn’t it? Get out of here.”
His father said the boy arrived home around 4 p.m., screaming: “Dad, someone threw boiling water on me. I’ve been burned!” The boy, who was 10 at the time, suffered second-degree burns to about four per cent of his body, including his face, chest and shoulder blade.
The agreed statement of facts notes that Borel and the boy did not know each other, and that no evidence suggested Borel targeted him because of his race.
The victim is protected
The boy’s identity is subject to a publication ban, and he is not named in coverage of the case. Publication bans of this kind are routine where a victim or witness in a criminal case is under 18: they bar publishing any information that could identify the young person, while leaving the accused — an adult, named in open court — fully reportable. A family friend said the sentence sends a clear message about what happens when someone takes frustration with neighbourhood children into their own hands.
Aggravated assault is among the more serious assault offences in the Criminal Code, reserved for assaults that wound, maim, disfigure or endanger a victim’s life, and it carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Borel’s 27 months sits well below that ceiling, reflecting her early guilty plea, which spared the boy from testifying, and the fact that the sentence was a joint submission both the Crown and the defence stood behind.
Borel had acknowledged in her guilty plea that she acted out of frustration over children repeatedly ringing her doorbell as a prank. What began as a sentencing hearing about that single moment of frustration ended with a prison term of more than two years.
