Man sentenced to 8 years for sex abuse, child pornography

Sexually preying on young girls while amassing child pornography has landed a Calgary man an eightyear prison term.

Provincial court Judge Lloyd Robertson on Monday agreed with Crown prosecutor Carolyn Ayre that Jackson Calis’s conduct warranted such a punishment.

Defence lawyer Mike Kiss had argued for a six-year sentence.

Calis, 45, pleaded guilty to seven charges involving the sexual abuse, attempts to lure, and possessing and distributing child pornography over a decade before he was taken into custody in March 2019.

Robertson noted Calis was found with nearly 175,000 images and videos of young girls either naked or scantily dressed or engaged in explicit sexual acts.

According to a statement of agreed facts signed by Calis and the lawyers, images and movies found on computer equipment following a Nov. 1, 2018, raid on his northeast Calgary home were mostly of girls between two and 16 years old.

Calis also used peer-to-peer software to share the illicit material found on his devices, and police found evidence he used common search terms to find such material on the internet.

He admitted to sexually abusing one girl between the ages of seven and 10 and luring another victim, who was 12 to 14 at the time, over the internet to send him sexually explicit images while he posed as a 16-year-old boy.

Robertson said there were multiple aggravating factors warranting a significant prison term, including the number of images found.

“The size of his collection was enormous,” the judge said.

With credit for pre-sentencing remand time, Calis will have a little more than six years left to serve.