Sex assault trial ends with denials
Convicted sex offender denies all allegations
After more than two weeks of hearing evidence in Trevor Philip Pritchard’s child luring and sexual assault trial, his defence is a relatively simply one: he didn’t do it. Calgary lawyer Bill Wister said Wednesday at the conclusion of the trial that Pritchard’s position “is one of denial.” He didn’t use Facebook to lure underage girls — including two girls who testified during his trial — into sending him naked pictures of themselves. He didn’t have a five-month sexual relationship with one of the girls. He didn’t know there were some 33 pictures of child pornography on his laptop computer. He didn’t have hundreds of sexually explicit Facebook conversations with underage girls.
Whenever the Crown accused him of any of those allegations, he simply denied them.
Pritchard, who is charged with two counts of child luring and one count each of sexual assault and possession of child pornography, is accused of luring the girls on Facebook using his own name and that of Phillip Fieldcamper. He testified Fieldcamper is not one of his user names — Phillip, he pointed out, is not spelled the same as his middle name — and he’s never used the alias or ever heard of it.
But a Crown forensic expert testified earlier that an examination of Facebook records and conversations between Pritchard and various girls, and between Fieldcamper and girls, shows the two users are the same person, which, Crown prosecutor Donna Spaner pointed out Wednesday in her closing arguments, was corroborated by one of the young complainants who testified she knew they were the same person.
Wister, however, said identity is an issue, as is the reliability of Facebook, on which users frequently misrepresent themselves to others.
“It’s akin to relying on the National Enquirer that Elvis is not dead,” Wister said.
Spaner, on the other hand, said police found overwhelming evidence after examining numerous electronic devices, including two cellphones and a laptop belonging to Pritchard, that Pritchard and Fieldcamper “are one and the same,” and that the same person used all three devices to communicate with underage girls and receive naked pictures of them, pictures that were shown as evidence in court.
The two young girls who took the stand for the Crown, testified they new Pritchard through Facebook and that he asked them to send him photos. And while one girl never met him, the other complainant said she ultimately had a lengthy sexual relationship with him.
Pritchard testified he had never seen the girls until they testified in court — even then a screen was placed between them — but the girl who had the relationship with him described his home, his dog, his tattoos and other personal details.
Wister suggested she could have gleaned that information from the internet, but Spaner said there is no evidence to support that allegation and urged the judge to “disavow” it as speculation.
“Trevor Pritchard committed the offences he is charged with,” Spaner said at the conclusion of her arguments.
Madam Justice J. C. Kubik reserved her decision, and said she likely won’t be available to give it until sometime in January. The matter will be back in court Dec. 10, however, when Wister is expected to withdraw as counsel of record and introduce another lawyer to represent Pritchard during the judge’s decision.
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