11-month sentence for man who possessed child porn videos
Justice Jennifer Broderick has sentenced Joshua Messier to 11 months behind bars for possessing child pornography.
She rendered her decision on Wednesday after finding the 39-year-old guilty in December 2019.
In April 2017, Peterborough Police reviewed the recent history of a program utilized by police to identify the internet protocol (IP) addresses of computers believed to be accessing or sharing files of child pornography.
Court heard police discovered four files downloaded from an internet file-sharing program. Further investigation revealed that the videos were downloaded from Messier’s IP address.
A search warrant was executed at Messier’s home on May 24, 2017, and his cellphone was seized.
After a subsequent search of his cellphone, police found 11 videos of child pornography, including the four videos originally discovered by police.
The videos, with the exception of one, show girls in the four to 12 age range being sexually abused by men.
“In total, the 10 videos comprised over 100 minutes of reallife sexual exploitation, victimization and degradation of preschool to pre-teen girls,” Broderick said in her decision.
“These are real-life children whose sexual abuse is being recorded for sexual gratification of pedophiles and predators.”
At trial, which was prosecuted by assistant Crown attorney Kevin Doyle, Messier claimed that after accidentally downloading a video of child pornography in September 2016, his curiosity was piqued as to why the content was still on the internet.
From September to May of 2017, he actively sought out child pornography using search terms such as “five-year-old,” “six-year-old,” “pedophile” and “kiddy porn.”
When interviewed by police, the only explanation offered by Messier was that he was a “super-curious person,” and that he could not understand why, with all the technology available, child pornography was still available online.
When asked by police if he was attracted to child pornography, Messier said: “The one way that I would say there’s an attraction to it is, I’m attracted to different, kind of hard-to-find, unique information.”
At trial, Messier said that by searching for, viewing and saving videos, he was conducting research or a layperson’s investigation. Broderick found no evidence to support his claim, stating his explanation was an after-thought and an attempt to lend legitimacy to his possession of child pornography.
“Mr. Messier’s characterization of his activities as ‘research’ and his collection as an ‘archive’ demonstrates his lack of appreciation of the inherent and actual harm to children as a result of his conduct,” Broderick said.
“There is no evidence that he has come to realize the harm created by his conduct.”
In addition to the 11-month sentence, Broderick placed Messier on probation for two years and placed him on the Sex Offender Information Registration list for 10 years.
Messier was also prohibited from being in the presence of anyone under 16 unless in the presence of a person older than 21 who is aware of his conviction.
He is also banned from using the internet unless it is during the course of employment.
“Mr. Messier poses some risk to children based on the length of time over which he sought out, downloaded and saved child pornography, the nature of the videos posted by him and his lack of insight,” Broderick added.