Sexual touching allegations lead to child porn probe
When a convicted sex offender gave a six-year-old girl an unusual good-night hug, the girl’s father was troubled.
He ultimately confronted Shawn Michael Rhode, then reported him to police. When police started their investigation, they found evidence of even more disturbing activities.
Rhode, 36, is on trial this week in Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench, charged with sexually touching the six-year-old girl on March 10, 2013, as well as numerous child pornography-related charges that were laid after police delved into his computer files and online activities, following the girl’s father’s complaint.
Rhode has prior convictions for possessing child pornography and indecent exposure, stemming from incidents in Saskatoon in 2005 and 2006. He was open about his record with the girl’s father, who testified Monday that he welcomed Rhode into a home church group in the hopes of helping him in his rehabilitation. The girl’s father can’t be named due to an publication ban on the identity of the girl.
“Our meetings, because they’re all in a home, and the home is full of different adults, the adults, most of them knew at least some element of Shawn’s struggles, so that there would be no occasion, or no opportunity, for a child to be victimized,” the man testified. “I thought my daughter would be safe ... I concluded that even though Shawn’s attractions are different than mine, that he was honestly working against them.”
That feeling changed on March 10, 2013, when the girl’s father noticed Rhode staring at his daughter during a home church meeting. Later on, when the girl went around the room to give everyone a good-night hug, the father said he saw Rhode cup the girl’s bum.
The father confronted Rhode a few days later and Rhode told him that any supposedly inappropriate touching was inadvertent. The father, however, reported Rhode to police. He also did some Internet searching and found usernames and aliases associated with Rhode that he also reported to police.
Sgt. Deborah Altrogge of the Saskatchewan Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit ultimately became involved, and began investigating activity associated with Rhode’s IP address. She found that IP address was used to log into an Internet chat room on Dec. 28, 2012, and post a message looking for “a real intimate relationship with a little girl.”
Police executed a search warrant at Rhode’s home in Saskatoon and seized several laptops and external hard drives. Officers found “blatant child pornography” in the form of a three-minute video on one of his laptops, Altrogge said, and further investigation in the coming days uncovered other photos and documents classified as child pornography.
Thus far, the evidence at the trial, which is scheduled to last a week, has been heard in a voir dire, or trial within a trial, to determine the admissibility of some of the evidence. Altrogge’s testimony is scheduled to continue Tuesday.