Manitoba court dismisses appeal of sex offender who filmed hundreds of Winnipeg children
Man collected thousands of images over 5-year period
WARNING: This story contains details of child sexual abuse
A Manitoba court has dismissed the appeal of a convicted sex offender who covertly filmed hundreds of children across Winnipeg and other parts of the province.
In a Manitoba Court of Appeal decision penned by Justice Jennifer A. Pfuetzner last week, the court upheld the appellant's 15-year sentence for possession, making and distribution of child sexual abuse material, luring and voyeurism.
The convicted man, who is identified by the initials A. L. B.-C. in the document, possessed nearly 8,000 child sexual abuse images and videos of young girls between the ages one and five, which he collected over five years.
The man surreptitiously filmed and photographed hundreds of unknown children in public places across Winnipeg and other parts of Manitoba, as well as some children known to him, including neighbours' daughters, his sister and his niece. In some videos, he was shown masturbating while filming and following children.
In 2020, Kik and Instagram reported to the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that the accused's accounts had downloaded child sexual abuse material. The IP addresses for the accounts were eventually linked to his home.
As well, police were able to recover a month's worth of chat messages from December 2020, during which the man traded and shared child sexual abuse material with others online; engaged in sexually explicit conversations with numerous children on various social media platforms; and counselled six female children to create child sexual abuse material, which he recorded and saved.
The man's overall 25-year sentence was reduced to 15 years in totality — a legal principle that is used to aggregate multiple sentences into a total prison term that is proportionate to the severity of a person's offences.
In his appeal, the man claimed the 15-year sentence he received was "demonstrably unfit." He sought a sentencing reduction to 10 years in totality.
Court not persuaded to adjust sentence
The man claimed the sentencing judge made errors while assessing aggravating factors, risk to reoffend, parity with other sexual-offence cases, and sentence reductions for totality.
He argued that the sentencing judge should not have treated the finding that "it is unclear how much insight [the accused] has into his behaviour" as an aggravating factor. The appeal court agreed this was an error in principle, but ruled it did not affect sentencing.
In his appeal, the man suggested the evidence did not support he had a high risk of reoffending, based on a pre-sentence report that assessed him as a low risk to reoffend generally, and an above-average risk to reoffend sexually.
That report was just one of many pieces of evidence considered by the sentencing judge, the court said.
"The entire context of the accused's offending over five years against countless children, together with the comments of the writer of the [pre-sentence report] that the accused's risk assessment 'will rise' upon his family becoming aware of the actual extent of his offending, supported the judge's finding that he was a high risk to reoffend," Pfuetzner wrote in the decision.
The man also argued that some of his sentences were not in line with other sentences given for luring and voyeurism. The Appeal Court was not persuaded, stating the accused offences were "much more egregious" than the other cases the accused cited to support his argument.
"Turning to the voyeurism sentence, we have no hesitation in rejecting the accused's argument," wrote Pfuetzner. "The sheer number of victims and the nature of the voyeuristic recordings warranted the sentence imposed by the judge."
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