Child porn charges dismissed against hockey volunteer

Child pornography charges against a hockey volunteer who sent a 14-year-old boy sex-related text messages have been dismissed.

Richard McSween, a volunteer with a junior hockey league in Niagara Falls, had pleaded not guilty to making and distributing child pornography, insisting he was only joking when he engaged in a text conversation with the teen, asking him to get his friend, also 14, to send him a photograph of his penis.

At trial, defence lawyer John Lefurgey argued his client had no requisite intention of committing an offence. While the language may be considered “vulgar and ill-informed,” he said, the context of the messages was not criminal. Judge Tory Colvin agreed.

In his judgment Monday in Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines, Colvin said he had a reasonable doubt as to McSween’s intent when he sent the text messages — which included several texts mentioning the exchange of money for a sexual act and an animated image of two stick figures having sex.

At trial, several teenage boys described the middle-aged defendant as “acting like a goofy teenage kid who happens to have a car” and not as mature as most adults. The judge agreed, describing the defendant naïve and immature.

Assistant Crown attorney Todd Morris had argued at trial the defendant was “grooming” the teens for future sexual activity.