Man charged in a string of brutal sex assaults pleads guilty

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A man Vancouver police call a serial sex predator has pleaded guilty to three brutal crimes against kids in Metro Vancouver.

Ibata Hexamer, 44, pleaded guilty to six charges, including sexual assault on August 3.

When he was arrested in December, 2010, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu called him a monster.

“Fifteen years ago, at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 1, 1995, a 13-year-old girl walked into the playground of Lord Nelson School grounds,” Chu said at the time.  

“A man approached her and asked her if she could help him find his child. He grabbed her by the wrist and told her he had a knife. The suspect pulled her to an outdoor stairwell attached to the school. She screamed and pleaded with him to let her go. He put his hand over her mouth. He kept her in the stairwell for several minutes while he sexually assaulted her. The victim is now 28-years-old and she has been waiting all this time for justice. I want to tell her the wait is over.”

Investigators found a DNA link between that case and two other violent cases that happened years later.

In 2007, a couple of 14-year-old girls were held at knife-point and sexually assaulted in Delta. In 2009, a six-year-old girl was held against her will in a wooded area of Surrey.

“The family of the victim has moved away from the area [in the Surrey case] due to the emotional trauma of this incident,” Chu notes.

When police discovered the link between the cases in 2009, they launched Project Scourge.

“At this point we realized this was a situation that was every parent’s worst nightmare — the realization that this was a serial child sex predator, and that he was unidentified, at large and free to re-offend at will,” lead investigator Detective Dan Murphy said after Hexamer was arrested. “For a victim to know that her attacker has committed crimes over a 15 year period with what must only have seemed like complete impunity is unimaginable.”

Hexamer will have sentencing hearing on October 9. He remains in custody.

Hexamer’s background

Former Vancouver COPE city councillor Tim Louis says Hexamer was his personal care assistant for a few years and found him to be quiet and unassuming.

Vision Vancouver city councillor Tim Stevenson says Hexamer also did some computer work for him some years ago.

“We didn’t get into chit-chat. He would just come in to do my computer work. He didn’t seem odd. He was very quiet, kind of shy,” remembers Stevenson.

A short biography on the COPE website, which is no longer available, says Hexamer was a party organizer. COPE Executive Director Alvin Singh says Hexamer worked in a low-level IT job during the 2005 and 2008 civic elections.

“All of the parties hire a number of people during the campaign to do to all sorts of work, and he was one of these individuals,” explains Singh, adding the party is shocked by the allegations.   

The bio also says Hexamer worked on the 2005-2006 federal election campaign as the database manager for the NDP in Vancouver Centre.

It says he graduated from UBC’s theatre program in 2002 and also ran the website RhythmNation.ca.