2021-03-31

Contraband porn offences result in prison sentence

A South Shore man who made child sex abuse material over a period of years, and made the contraband pornography available to others, was sentenced to four years in federal prison for the crimes.

Among punishments for the 46-year-old, he had to submit a DNA sample to the national databank, and must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. The man, who cannot be named because it could identify a victim, committed the offences in Lunenburg County.

The man also possessed child pornography and made it available March 14, 2019, the day authorities searched his property. A charge of using email on April 13, 2019 to make an arrangement with a person to commit sexual interference was dismissed following his March 16 sentencing in Bridgewater provincial court.

Search warrant records previously released to LighthouseNOW indicated the RCMP's Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit was alerted to the man's activities after suspected sexually-explicit contraband pictures were found on an American online image and video hosting service.

The service, Flickr, filed nine reports to the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which were forwarded to Canadian authorities. The images were reviewed in April 2019 by Nova Scotia RCMP.

On the day of the search, Cpl. Mark Sobieraj wrote in the document used to justify a search warrant, "several hundred images" were uploaded to Flickr, many of which met the criminal code definition of child pornography.

Most of the pictures, Sobieraj wrote, were of a little girl who was two-to-six-years of age. The images "were taken over a number of years," the officer wrote.

"I believe that many of the poses in the photographs are highly staged, and unnatural for any person," reads the document, in part. "The main focus of many of the photographs appears to be the child's sexual organs."

Police also found photos of a "sexual focus" of unidentified young cheerleaders walking in a parade.

Charges were laid against the man in May 2019, but that Information was withdrawn and a new replacement set of allegations were filed in July 2019.

He originally pleaded not guilty, and seven days were set aside in 2020 for a provincial court trial.

In September 2020, the man admitted to three charges, but sentencing was postponed several times, including for the preparation of a sexual behaviour assessment, before his punishment was handed down March 16 of this year.