Sex offender sentenced to 6.5 years

Psychiatric assessment ordered for Trevor Pritchard

Aconvicted sex offender who sexually assaulted an underage girl in 2017, has been sentenced to six and a half years in a federal prison. The sentence is right in the range Calgary lawyer Andre Ouellette was seeking for Trevor Philip Pritchard, who pleaded guilty last April to a charge of sexual assault and child luring. But it’s just shy of the seven years recommended by the Crown.

Crown prosecutor Sarah Goard-Baker recommended the higher penitentiary term during Pritchard’s sentencing hearing Wednesday in Lethbridge Court of Queen’s Bench. She told court Pritchard carefully planned the assault, and, using Facebook, carefully groomed the girl to trust him over several months before he finally took her to his house — under the pretense of giving her a job — and forced her into various sex acts. He then drove her home and threatened to kill her if she told anyone.

The girl told her mother several hours later and she was taken to the hospital for an examination.

“The offence has taken a big emotional impact on my life,” the young girl wrote in her victim impact statement, which Goard-Baker read in court Wednesday during Pritchard’s sentencing hearing.

“I cannot live a normal life after what happened. It’s hard for me to even want to leave my house some days. I’m scared to get a job because I’m afraid to talk to people I don’t know.”

Although sentenced to six and a half years, Judge Rodney A. Jerke gave Pritchard credit for time spent in custody since Jan. 18, 2017. The credit, based on one and half days for every day he spent in custody, reduces Pritchard’s sentence by 37 1/2 months, leaving him just under three and a half years to serve.

Ouellette tried to convince the judge to credit Pritchard two and a half days for every day he spent in custody, which would have reduced the sentence even more, but Jerke refused.

He did, however, offer Pritchard the chance to appeal that decision within 30 days.

Pritchard still faces four other sex-related charges against underage girls in an unrelated case.

He was found guilty last month of sexual assault against one girl and child luring against another. He was also found guilty of child luring against multiple unidentified children and one count of possession of child pornography.

Sentencing on the four charges has been adjourned while Crown Prosecutor Donna Spaner seeks to apply to have Pritchard designated

a dangerous offender. During a separate hearing Wednesday, Madam Justice J. C. Kubik consented to the Crown’s application to order Pritchard to have a 60-day psychiatric assessment at the Southern Alberta Forensic Psychiatry Centre in Calgary. The resulting report, expected by June 10, will provide the basis for a decision whether Pritchard should be deemed a dangerous or long-term offender.

During Pritchard’s trial last November, two young girls testified they met Pritchard through Facebook and that he asked them to send him naked photos of themselves. And while one girl never met him, the other complainant said she ultimately had a lengthy sexual relationship

with him.

Pritchard, 34, testified he didn’t use Facebook to lure underage girls into sending him pictures, and he didn’t have a five-month sexual relationship with one of the girls. He also said he didn’t know — despite police evidence — that there were some 33 pictures of child pornography on his laptop computer, and he denied having hundreds of sexually explicit Facebook conversations with underage girls.

Kubik said last month she accepts the evidence of two young, female witnesses, but rejects Pritchard’s testimony given on the last day of his trial, during which he denied all of the allegations against him.

Follow @DelonHerald on Twitter