Dangerous offender receives 11-year sentence for sex crimes
A Windsor man with an extensive history of sexual crimes against children has been designated a dangerous offender, but won’t be held behind bars indefinitely.
Daniel George Nickolson, 51, was sentenced Friday to 11 years in prison. With time served, his sentence is reduced to just shy of six years — five years, 11 months and 15 days. After his release, Nickolson will be on what the courts call a “long-term supervision order” for 10 years. He can’t go on the internet and he can’t go near a school, public park or any other place where children are normally found.
In his latest raft of crimes between 2012 and 2014, Nickolson trolled the internet looking for pubescent and pre-pubescent girls in chat rooms. He had sexually charged conversations with 20 girls.
He coerced some of them to send him naked pictures of themselves by threatening to go to the police and having them put in foster care, exposing them on social media or sending someone to harm their families.
He counselled boys to sexually assault their younger sisters and callously encouraged one girl to commit suicide.
In 2009, Nickolson travelled from Windsor to Saskatchewan and abducted a 14-year-old girl he had convinced to run away from home.
He had just been released from prison from that incident when he began trolling the internet for new victims.
“There can be no doubt that Nickolson is a dangerous offender,” said Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas, noting Nickolson is “indifferent” to the psychological harm he perpetrates on his young victims. But Thomas said he was deferring to the expert opinion of a psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Pearce, who said the risk Nickolson poses can be controlled if he is released.
“I choose to embrace the optimism of Dr. Pearce,” Thomas said. He recommended Nickolson get sex offender treatment and that, until he is in his 70s, he get injected with medication to lower his sex drive.
LURING, CHILD PORN
Thomas in September convicted Nickolson of 17 counts of luring, one count of making child pornography, 16 counts of extortion and one count of invitation to sexual touching. A further 18 similar counts were stayed, the crimes having been committed in the course of the other 53 crimes for which Nickolson was convicted.
In addition, police and prosecutors say Nickolson had committed a further 186 crimes they did not pursue. Thomas said he considered those unprosecuted crimes in coming to his ruling on a sentence.
After his arrest in 2014, Nickolson’s family found evidence of further crimes and turned it over to police. Police seized two computers and found 160,000 messages with 22 chat partners under the age of 16 and 41 videos and 1,726 images depicting child pornography.
Prosecutors had sought an indeterminate sentence for Nickolson, meaning he could be held behind bars indefinitely. A parole board would review Nickolson’s case periodically, but there would be no set date when he would have to be released.
Nickolson’s defence lawyers had asked for a sentence of six to nine years, followed by supervision for 10 years after his release.
There can be no doubt that Nickolson is a dangerous offender.