Stepdad faces jail for child pornography

Editor’s note: The following contains graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

Just four days after a Penticton man sent nude photos of his teenaged stepdaughter to an undercover FBI agent in the U.S., local police were knocking on his door.

Now the Crown wants the offender, who can’t be named due to a publication ban meant to protect the girl’s identity, sent to prison for at least three years.

The offender pleaded guilty to a single count of importing or distributing child pornography and his sentencing hearing began Tuesday in B.C. Supreme Court. In exchange for his plea, three additional counts are expected to be stayed at the conclusion of the hearing, which is slated to run in bits and pieces through the week.

Crown counsel Ann Lerchs opened her submissions by calling for a prison sentence in the range of 36 to 42 months.

Reading from the police report, Lerchs said the offender on Jan. 7, 2020, began communicating via the Kik online messaging service with the undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a pedophile in a chat room where members exchanged child pornography and erotica.

The FBI agent struck up a digital conversation with the offender, and over the next day received 13 different images of the offender’s stepdaughter in various states of undress. The images were recorded using spy cameras the offender set up in his family’s home, including the bathroom.

The offender admitted he was attracted to the girl, then 15, and had been secretly recording her since she was 12. The FBI agent even got the offender to send a fresh photo showing the offender holding up three fingers in front of a unique shower curtain that was in the background of one of the girl’s photos.

With that confirmation in hand the FBI alerted the RCMP, who executed a search warrant at the offender’s Penticton home on Jan. 11, 2020.

Mounties seized electronics and storage devices containing 314 images and 20 videos that met the definition of child pornography. Some of the images and videos depicted the stepdaughter, while others showed unknown females between the ages of five and 15.

Turning to a pre-sentencing report and psychological assessment delving into the offender’s background, Lerchs said the offender reported a long-standing interest in teenaged girls and was pegged as an average risk to reoffend.

Meanwhile, the victim’s mother reports the girl is attending counselling and doing “well,” said Lerchs.

Defence counsel James Pennington, who’s expected to make his full submissions Wednesday afternoon, said the facts of the case are not in dispute and “speak for themselves.”