Three years added to sentence for livestreaming of child porn

Warning: Graphic content

A Saskatoon man who paid impoverished women overseas to livestream the sexual abuse of their children has three more years tacked on to his prison term after the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal increased his sentence from 12 to 15 years.

In its decision, issued Wednesday, five judges agreed Philip Michael Chicoine’s penalty for committing 40 sexual offences against approximately 18 children over a span of six years should be higher.

“... While his personal circumstances resulted in a determination that the appropriately calculated sentence was unduly long or harsh and needed to be reduced to a level that would promote rehabilitation, those circumstances play a lesser role in determining his ultimate sentence,” Justice Jacelyn Ryan-froslie wrote on behalf of the five judges. “The overarching consideration in determining that ultimate sentence is the principle of proportionality.”

Chicoine pleaded guilty to making, possessing, accessing, and distributing child porn, luring, making sexually explicit material available to children, arranging to commit sexual offences against children, conspiring to make child porn and conspiring to sexually assault a child.

Between 2011 and 2017, Chicoine had paid women in Romania and the Philippines $23,000 to sexually abuse their own children and stream it online, in real-time, so he could direct the abuse and turn it into child pornography. The victims were between 10 months and 14 years old.

Police discovered evidence of the live streaming during a search of Chicoine’s home in 2017, after he uploaded child porn to a social media account.

Chicoine was 28 when he received the highest child pornography-related sentence in Saskatchewan history at 12 years. The Crown had argued for a 17-year sentence and filed an appeal on the basis that the 12-year sentence imposed was not proportionate to the gravity of the offence.

Specifically, the Crown said the six-year sentences on 11 counts of conspiring and arranging to commit sexual offences against children should run consecutively, not concurrently, to Chicoine’s fiveyear sentence for making child porn. The Crown argued Judge Vanessa Monar Enweani treated the offences too lightly by focusing on the fact that Chicoine did not actually touch the children.

“He was present in real time and directed and orchestrated the assaults. In my view, his conduct equated to “hands-on” sexual offending,” Ryan-froslie wrote.

The appeal judges ruled the two-year sentences for conspiring to sexually assault children and four-year sentences for agreeing to commit sexual offences against children would run consecutively to all other charges.

After adjusting Chicoine’s sentence for making child porn, a global sentence of 15 years was imposed.