Sex offender blames case delay for reoffence

Man tells judge he might not have lured girls over internet if he’d been sentenced faster

WINNIPEG— A man who lured young girls over the internet while awaiting sentencing for the same offences told a Winnipeg judge the lengthy delay in his case allowed him to reoffend.

David Thomas Pearson was sentenced Friday to five years and nine months for eight criminal charges, including six counts of luring — for posing as a teenage boy online — and requesting nude photos from young girls.

The Winnipeg man was charged in 2011 with child luring for communicating with a 15-year-old Las Vegas girl he met online while pretending to be a 16-year-old boy.

He pleaded guilty to that offence in January 2015 but sentencing didn’t happen until May 2016, when he received a two-year sentence.

Pearson told the judge had his case been handled quicker, “I probably wouldn’t be here before you today because I would’ve been incarcerated and I would’ve had the opportunity to reflect on what I have done as being negative, hearing the victim- impact statements and learned from my wrongs at that point in time.”

While Pearson was out on bail awaiting sentencing, he purchased a laptop and smartphone, violating conditions of his bail, and continued to pose as a boy on an instantmessaging app called Kik and asked girls to send him nude photos.

His communications only came to light after a parent noticed Pearson taking cellphone photos of children at Nutimik Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park in August 2015.

RCMP investigators seized his devices, finding zoomed-in photos of children’s genitals while they were playing on the beach, court heard.

Police couldn’t access Pearson’s password-protected Samsung smartphone, but while it was in police possession, messages from girls kept popping up.

Police found Pearson had been communicating with at least six girls in the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 16 from 2013 until his arrest in 2015. Some of the girls believed Ethan was their online boyfriend and four had sent him intimate images.

Pearson has about four years and eight months left to serve, after being given credit for the time he’s already spent in custody. He will be required to register as a sex offender for life.