MD guilty in kid-porn case

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This article was published 03/09/2009 (5875 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ross Brown was a prominent city doctor, respected community leader and former president of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Now the 72-year-old is a convicted criminal after pleading guilty Wednesday in an international child-pornography case. The tall, white-haired grandfather of three left court in handcuffs to begin serving a 45-day jail sentence, which will be followed by three years of supervised probation.

"I’ll be carrying this burden of shame for the rest of my life," Brown told provincial court Judge Rob Finlayson as he read from a typewritten statement. "I want to express my deep remorse and regret for what I did. I truly appreciate and acknowledge how wrong my actions are."

Brown admitted to possessing nearly 5,000 pornographic photos involving children as young as two engaged in explicit sex acts, including bondage and bestiality. He also had 30 videos and a "PowerPoint presentation on child pornography" on two home computers, said Crown attorney Tony Kavanagh. A sampling of the images was shown to the judge in court Wednesday.

"This is proof all types of individuals from all walks of life can and do become embroiled in this exploitative crime," Kavanagh told court.

Brown has no prior criminal record and had been free on bail since his October 2006 arrest. At the time, Brown was the vice-president for clinical care in the department of radiology at St. Boniface General Hospital. He retired a short time later. Hospital officials launched an internal investigation and later reported that no allegations had surfaced of improper conduct with any patients.

"He’s been humiliated, embarrassed. He’s ashamed at his conduct and the poor judgment he showed," defence lawyer Jeff Gindin said Wednesday. He noted his client still has tremendous support from family members and many high-profile friends who submitted glowing letters to the court.

"The last three years have been the worst of his very productive life," the defence lawyer said.

According to justice officials, Brown’s name first surfaced in June 2006 during an FBI probe of a child-abuse case involving a 12-year-old Georgia girl. The FBI discovered a website containing modelling-type photos of the girl and learned the administrative contact was listed as a "Ross Brown." Brown’s street address in Winnipeg was also listed.

The FBI interviewed the girl, who told them hundreds of graphic pictures had been taken by a family friend known as "Uncle Mac" during the previous year. Police identified the man as Georgia resident Wilbur Caldwell and charged him with manufacturing child pornography. Six other men — aged 22 to 52 — were also charged with raping the girl.

Police said the men had answered advertisements Caldwell placed on the Internet in which he presented the girl as 18 and said she was seeking sex partners. Caldwell then had a video camera hidden in a bookshelf in the basement of his home and recorded her performing sex acts with her boyfriend and the men who answered the advertisements.

Caldwell, 52, quickly pleaded guilty and received a 15-year prison sentence under a plea deal with U.S. justice authorities. To avoid a much stiffer sentence, he agreed to help authorities and gave statements that led police to Brown.

Caldwell told officers he met Brown in an online chat room. Caldwell says the two men spoke about setting up the modelling website for the Georgia girl — the same site that was later traced to Brown in Winnipeg. They communicated through email and phone conversations, and Brown identified himself as a doctor who lived in Canada, Caldwell said.

Kavanagh said Wednesday the FBI was exploring possible U.S. charges against Brown, but have wrapped up its investigation without taking action.

Brown was president of the community-owned Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 1988 when the team won the Grey Cup in Ottawa, then stayed on for another year. He first joined the Bombers organization in 1982 as a member of the team’s board of directors. Brown was also a member of the 1991 Grey Cup planning committee. He was inducted into the football club’s Hall of Fame in 2006.

Brown became a medical doctor in 1961 after graduating from the University of Manitoba. He spent several years working and teaching in Oklahoma before returning to Canada in the late 1970s.

Brown’s probation includes 120 hours of community service work, ongoing sex-offender counselling and an order to have no unsupervised contact with children. He must also submit a DNA sample to the national databank and be placed on the national sex offender registry.

www.mikeoncrime.com