Kid-porn convict’s new hobby

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/12/2009 (5783 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While Ross Brown waited for his trial for possession of child porn, he had a hobby.

 

The former doctor is a landscape and nature photographer. He also shoots plenty of nudes.

Many of his images of young women are posted on a modelling website. They’re hidden between a pay wall, accessible only to those who pay a $100 membership fee.

Brown contributes to an online portfolio called Shaven Angels. The women are often made to look younger than 18.

Brown landed softly after his child-porn conviction. He was handed a 45-day sentence and served only 30 days.

One of the conditions of his parole was that he not own a computer.

His wife’s got one.

Until this week, Winnipeg police and Probation Services had no idea what Brown was up to. His probation officer visits Brown’s house once a month. The website wasn’t found.

How does a man discovered having 5,000 images and 30 videos of children as young as two engaged in explicit sex acts manage to keep shooting nudes?

Technically, it’s not illegal once you get beyond him not owning a computer. It’s hard to know how his conditions of probation would allow him to maintain a web page.

Basically, it seems no one was paying attention.

If Brown is already hiding soft-core porn on the Internet, what’s to stop him from slipping back into his child-porn habit?

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On Feb. 21, 2009, Brown walked into a downtown Winnipeg photography studio accompanied by two young women.

He booked four hours of studio time at Prairie View Photography and paid the $35-an-hour fee up front.

Brown hired a lighting technician, a requirement of the studio.
Brown shot thousands of images. Some were so-called glamour shots with the models displaying their cleavage or wearing only panties and cropped shirts.

Other pictures were explicit. They included shots of Tanya K (she does not want her full name used) clad in panties and holding a toy.

Under Canadian criminal law, the images the Free Press viewed are not considered obscene or pornographic.

“We didn’t know who he was at the time,” says Prairie View spokeswoman Lauralee Burstahl. “He said he was a businessman from Vancouver.”

It wasn’t until after the photo shoot was complete that Ross Brown’s name hit the news.

“Now we Google everyone who comes in,” says Burstahl ruefully.

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Brown was arrested in June 2006 after his name surfaced during an FBI probe of a child-abuse case involving a 12-year-old Georgia girl. At the time, the then-69-year-old was the vice-president for clinical care in the department of radiology at St. Boniface General Hospital.

Brown retired a short time after his arrest. His ties to the community were strong, a fact that would be raised as he faced sentencing.

He was in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Hall of Fame. A number of well-known people, including former Bombers coach Cal Murphy, wrote letters of support.

His paltry sentence showed how casually child pornography can still be taken in this country.

Brown’s ardent supporters could not have known this pillar of society would continue his interest in naked photos.

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Tanya K’s ambition is to appear in Playboy.

At 28, she’ll do “implied nudes” but won’t go buck-naked for anyone but Playboy.

Ross Brown shot her in a brief top and panties, clutching a stuffed rabbit against her breasts.

She was stunned to hear of Brown’s criminal history.

“I thought he was quite good,” she says. “He was easy to work with. Him and I met prior to see if we were thinking along the same lines.”

At his trial, the Crown knew the American authorities had discovered Brown through a modelling website. There’s no evidence they knew about his continued involvement.

Det. Sgt. John Siderius of the Winnipeg Police Service sex crimes unit didn’t know Brown was still in the on-line photography business. He didn’t know Brown was part of an active pay-per-view website that shares naked pictures of models.

“He hasn’t breached his parole conditions,” says Siderius. “As long as it’s not illegal there’s nothing we can do.”

On Dec. 2, Siderius’s team told Probation Services what Brown was doing in his spare time.

The photos of the two Winnipeg women, and others in British Columbia and Alberta, are posted to a website called Model Mayhem.

On his page, there’s a shot of Brown holding a camera. His signature photo is a shot of a splay-legged woman in a red bra.
Brown last accessed his account Dec. 3.

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On his web page Brown says without apparent irony:
“I have had an interest in photography for some time but now have time to devote to it.”

A forced retirement, brief jail sentence and a public shaming will free up your schedule.

In a telephone interview, Brown said he’s been taking photographs off and on for four or five years.

“It wasn’t anything to make large sums of money,” he said.

His primary interest is outdoor shots, he said. The Winnipeg Art Gallery had three of Brown’s photographs in its Sales and Rental inventory.

Brown explained that he travelled to British Columbia and Alberta to work with professional models. Their nude pictures are posted behind the pay wall on the site.

He says his attraction to sexually oriented pictures of nude children and his photos of naked women are not connected.
“None of the stuff I’ve done is connected with my legal problems,” he said.

“My legal problems didn’t have anything to do with taking pictures. They had to do with looking at pictures.”

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A man whose reputation was destroyed because he downloaded thousands of sexual pictures of children takes pictures of women whose pubic hair is shaven to make them look younger. He’s hiding those images behind a pay wall on a website.

He may say his primary interest is in nature and landscape photography, but it’s his shots of nudes that people pay to see.

Can Ross Brown be stopped? Apparently not by the court system, or by the police.

Surely someone out there can convince Brown to stick to pictures of flowers and snow-covered trees.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca