No jail time for kiddie porn

Calgarian  gets six months of house arrest and six months of curfew for surfing sites. Surfing for kiddie porn on the Internet will mean six months of house arrest and another six under a curfew for a city man, a judge ruled yesterday. Provincial court Judge Allan Fradsham said a conditional sentence to be served in the community for [the accused] was adequate punishment.

Fradsham said he did not share the Crown’s concern about [the accused’s] likelihood for re-offending after a psychological assessment said he was a low risk. Prosecutor Jenny Rees said she feared [the accused] didn’t appreciate the harm child pornography does or the seriousness of his crime.

“The accused...gave no indication of remorse, or empathy for the victims, or the fact that this is a serious crime and children are being victimized,” Rees said.  
“My greatest concern...is the fact that he didn’t seem to acknowledge the seriousness of the offence and because of that may be a higher risk to re-offend.”

But Fradsham said the psychologist who deemed [the accused] a low risk was aware of those factors when she made her report to the court.   [the accused] admitted having 96 child pornography images on his personal computer, which police searched after learning he had purchased Internet sites providing such smut. There was also evidence of 167 deleted images as well as a thumbnail page of 100 pictures and three videos, two of which had already been deleted. Rees said most of the photos were of young girls posing, but a few showed sexual acts between adults and children. 

Defence lawyer David Chow said [the accused] was simply naive about the implications of accessing websites which claimed to be legal.  Following his conditional sentence [the accused] must serve two years on probation. He is also prohibited from attending areas where children frequent, such as pools and playgrounds, for 10 years.

2006-08-17
The Calgary Sun
By: Kevin Martin