Mother will be sentenced in April for sex crimes against daughter

Warning: Story contains details of child abuse

A Saskatoon King's Bench judge says she doesn't believe a 29-yearold woman who testified that a man she met online initiated and tried to force her into making child pornography of the sexual abuse of her four-year-old daughter.

Testifying at her judge-alone trial in December, the woman said she refused, and denied any inappropriate behaviour with the girl.

Justice Natasha Crooks said there were too many inconsistencies with the woman's story, finding she was the one who tested the waters with men online by first talking about sexually abusing her daughter, then sending images of her engaging in sex acts with her daughter and finally offering to meet men to engage in sex acts with her and her daughter.

Last Thursday, Crooks found the woman guilty of five of the eight charges she faced: sexual assault, sexual touching of a child, distributing and making child porn and arranging to commit a sexual offence against a child between October 2019 and January 2021.

During her trial, she pleaded guilty to bestiality for sending images of her performing a sexual act with her dog to three men.

The woman's identity is being withheld to comply with a court-ordered publication ban on any information that could identify her daughter.

Defence lawyer Aleida Oberholzer requested a pre-sentence report. Sentencing has been scheduled for April 15.

Court heard the woman, then 25, had two daughters — two and four years old — and was pregnant when she was arrested in February 2021. She was released on bail shortly after.

Outlining the evidence at trial, Crooks said a man went to police on Jan. 11, 2021, to disclose that a woman he met online sent him three series of videos of her sexually abusing her daughter.

He allowed police to search his devices. Several text messages were retrieved, but the videos had been deleted, Crooks said.

This led to a search of the woman's home, and her daughters being apprehended.

The evidence of three men she was communicating with on a chat application called Kik “establish a pattern of sexual conduct by (the woman) toward (her daughter),” Crooks said.

She ruled one of the most credible pieces of evidence came from the woman's daughter who, during cross-examination, corrected Oberholzer when she replied to a question about her mom licking her, saying “No, not licking me, me licking my mom.” “I didn't want that,” the girl said. This was corroborated by the man who went to police, Crooks said. He testified that the videos showed the girl performing oral sex on her mother.

The defence argued the girl's police statement — where she said she used to lick her mom — and testimony were influenced by her younger daughter's father. Crooks disagreed because the father only had supervised visits with her in the six days between her apprehension and her police interview.

“When the evidence is considered as a whole, it readily confirms that (the woman) had an evolving and escalating pattern of behaviour — engage with men online, move them to Kik, share sexual images, share bestiality, raise sexual innuendo about her daughter, gauge the men's reaction, and engage in the sexual victimization of her daughter with an imminent escalation toward her daughter's sexual victimization by others,” Crooks concluded.

All three men said the woman tried to arrange meetups at hotels or her home and offered to bring her daughter.

The woman testified that she portrayed her daughter in a sexual light to “bait” men into sharing child porn, at the direction of the man who went to police.

Crooks noted that she reached out to 20 or 30 men, but never connected the man with any of them.

She said her plan was to meet the men first and pretend her daughter was coming.

“This went beyond fantasy. The evidence is that (the woman) was using (her daughter) for her own sexual gratification, and this was escalating. (She) was well on her way to making this a reality,” Crooks ruled.

The woman said she was scared of the man who went to police because she saw him parked outside her house, and worried he would expose her sexual lifestyle in the fetish community to her boyfriend and family.

The woman testified that she didn't report the man's behaviour because she doesn't trust police, even though Crooks noted she went to police to report vandalism on her car.

Crooks also questioned why the man would have to depend on the woman to find him child porn when, as one man put it, “child pornography is easy to find.”

The woman also pleaded guilty to breaching her release conditions by using devices that could access the internet, and for being around children without the prior approval of her probation officer.

Crown prosecutor Lana Morelli said between February 2023 and January 2024, the woman started dating a man she met on Plenty of Fish, moved in with him and was photographed at family events holding his two-year-old nephew.

She was also caught using a Nintendo switch — which could access the internet — that she tried to hide from police by throwing it in the garbage.