Gymnastics coach sent to jail for child porn

Judge hands 2-year term to Angelo Despotas, who filmed his young students using toilet

A Kelowna gymnastics coach who filmed his young athletes using the toilet was jailed two years Monday for making and possessing child pornography.

Angelo Despotas betrayed the trust of the students he was supposed to be teaching, guiding and inspiring, Judge Jim Threlfall said Monday.

“The damage done to the victims is incalculable,” Threlfall said. “Many of the victims had trained with him for years.”

Before sentencing, Despotas had turned to face the courtroom galley, where many of his former students and victims were sitting, to apologize for his actions.

“The crimes I committed were a gross intrusion and violation of personal privacy,” Despotas, 48, said. “My actions were inexcusable.

“I wish to express sincere regret and apologize to all those I’ve hurt and embarrassed,” said Despotas, who had pleaded guilty to the charges.

Many spectators were weeping as one of Despotas’s young victims read an impact statement that described the profound distress she’d experienced since learning she’d been secretly filmed for sexual purposes by a man she regarded as a mentor.

“He was looking to exploit me in ways I could not imagine,” said the victim, who has given up gymnastics. “Because of him, that whole part of my life feels dirty and uncomfortable.”

In other victim impact statements, one parent said her daughter, a once-promising gymnast, had attempted suicide.

“In her mind, her whole life was over,” the parent said.

Another parent told Despotas: “The pain you caused is more than a video. It’s a betrayal (with) nightmares, tears and long days of sadness . . . . You left your scar on our family.”

Court heard Despotas, a short, slight man, was a highly regarded gymnastics coach with 20 years’ experience when he moved to Kelowna in 2002. Students came from as far away as Mexico and Germany to train under Despotas.

However, he came to police attention after the breakup of a child pornography ring in Ontario in 2012. Some of the files were eventually traced to Despotas, and Kelowna police began investigating him in 2015.

They found videos he’d made using a small camera placed in a trash bin 1.5 metres from a toilet in a female washroom at a local gymnastics facility. The video shows the genitalia of girls as young as 12.

Police also found 2,040 images of child pornography, not involving Despotas’s students, on a laptop he owned. Those images, Judge Threlfall said, were “beyond disturbing.”

The two consecutive sentences, of 14 months for making child pornography and 10 months for possessing it, were the result of a joint submission from the Crown and defence.