Man sentenced to federal prison on child pornography charges

By Cal Braid SOUTHERN ALBERTA NEWSPAPERS Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on August 21, 2024.

A local man was sentenced to more than five years in prison on Aug. 13 after pleading guilty to charges of making, printing, and/or publishing child pornography, possessing child pornography and failing to comply with release order conditions. The indictable offenses were exacerbated by the fact that the man covertly possessed a cell phone after his release on the original charges. The man appeared via CCTV from a correctional centre, dressed in a blue jumpsuit and wearing a passive expression. A co-accused is similarly charged in the case and will face sentencing in November.

The sentencing began with a statement from Crown Prosecutor Richelle Freiheit which made clear that the case was subject to a publication ban that would prevent the disclosure of any information that might reveal the identity of any victim of the crimes.

Justice Hironaka ruled the day’s proceedings. Prior to lunch hour and the afternoon sentencing he received a representative sample of the offending material, presumably video evidence possessed by the guilty man.

Frieheit said to the judge, “If you’re sentencing someone for an offence, you should have a full understanding of what that offence is.” The sample was jointly submitted by the Crown and defence, and Hironaka said it served the purpose of guiding his determination of the range of sentencing.

When reading the facts of the matter, Frieheit disclosed explicit details, referring to a co-accused and victim only by their initials.

The crimes occurred in Taber, Barnwell, and Lethbridge beginning in 2019. The offender used child pornography apps, set up a fake online identity, and installed a data hiding application on his phone. He was eventually reported, traced to an IP address, and geo-located by law enforcement.

Initially when his phone was seized, it contained 762 category one images and 1,813 category one videos. Forensics also examined a HP dual hard drive tower found in the man’s residence. One hard drive contained 16,662 category one images, 190 category one videos, and 361,456 category two images. The second hard drive contained 11,230 category one images, 742 category one videos, and 70,733 category two images. The categories range from one to five on a severity scale, but Freiheit described other, far more extreme content than category one or two content would imply.

The offender was first arrested in 2023, and in a police interview he admitted that he’d been viewing and downloading child pornography for years. After sexually offending as a youth and attending counselling, he continued using the material to “control his urges, to deal with personal stress,” Freiheit said.

After his arrest in 2024, he was released on bail conditions which prohibited him from possessing any electronic devices capable of accessing the internet or sending messages.

In April, law enforcement tracked another complaint related to the same offender, and after an investigation, obtained a search warrant for his residence. They located a fully charged, active iPhone 11 between the man’s box spring and mattress. Forensic analysis showed “near continuous use by the accused,” according to the Crown. The phone’s GPS tracked 2,601 coordinates throughout southern Alberta from February to July.

The sentencing took 50 minutes and Freiheit said that though possessing child pornography was a substantive indictable offense, by making the content the man was engaging in aggravating behaviour which called for a significantly higher sentence. The Crown and defence offered a joint submission of five and three quarters years for the sentence related to possessing, making, and distributing the content. They disagreed about the cell phone breach, with the Crown seeking an additional six months due to the flagrant and continuous nature of it.

Defence counsellor Darcy Shurtz argued for 50 days due to the fact that the man had no previous criminal record and breaches typically resolve with short sentences. “I think six months is gross and disproportionate to the offence,” he said.

Judge Hironaka said, “He was charged with a horrendous amount of material, he clearly knew that the jig was up.” He gave the man 120 extra days for his blatant disregard of the bail condition.

“The representative sample of the offending material was just egregious. The joint submission is appropriate,” the judge said, and imposed a global sentence of roughly 2,100 days, with 50 credited to the man for the time he has already spent in custody. Shurtz asked the judge if he would refer the man to a central Alberta institution which has a treatment program for sex offenders, citing the man’s wish to participate in such a program. Hironaka said that he could add the request to the file, but that the matter was not in his hands.

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