Convicted sex offender wants to withdraw latest guilty pleas

LETHBRIDGE, ALTA. A hearing is to be held early next year for a southern Alberta man who wants to withdraw guilty pleas to charges of sexual assault and child luring.

Trevor Pritchard of Coaldale will try to persuade a judge that the pleas should be struck from the record.

Pritchard entered the pleas in April, his fourth conviction for sexually assaulting adolescent girls, which prompted the Crown to seek a dangerous offender designation for him.

He parted ways with his lawyer shortly after and his new counsel has argued that Pritchard was not fully aware of the implications of the guilty pleas.

An agreed statement of facts says Pritchard admitted to forcing a 15-year-old girl he had met on Facebook into various sexual acts before driving her home and threatening to kill her if she told anyone.

She had agreed to meet him in January 2017 believing that he would take her to a job interview, but the statement says Pritchard instead took the girl to his place.

The application to withdraw the guilty pleas is to go before the Court of Queen’s Bench justice who originally accepted them. It has been set for Feb. 5-7.

Defence lawyer William Wister has said it’s important for the court to determine how much Pritchard understood when he entered the guilty pleas that prompted the Crown’s dangerous offender application, which, if granted, could see Pritchard jailed indefinitely.

“It is the most serious form of restriction on people’s freedom, and we value freedom in our society,” Wister said after his client’s court appearance in September.

“There’s an obligation to determine ... that (Pritchard) fully understood the implications of that,” he said.

“You have to look at people’s mental capacity, what they understood, not so much what’s being said, but what do they take away from it.”

Wister has said he would like to see the guilty pleas removed and for the case to be scheduled for trial.

Pritchard’s three prior convictions for sexually assaulting adolescent girls came in 2004, 2009 and 2010.