Convicted sex offender awaits latest sentence

Prosecutors are seeking a 15-year prison sentence for a Red Lake, Ont., man who groomed two Indigenous girls online and drove nearly 500 kilometres to Winnipeg to sexually abuse one of them.

Scott Christopher Alcorn, 50, has pleaded guilty to one count each of child luring, sexual interference and possession of child sexual abuse material.

Alcorn was still on parole for child sex offences at the time of his April 2025 arrest, having been convicted four years earlier of providing a 16-year-old girl a bottle of alcohol in exchange for sex.

“Despite this (prior conviction)… Mr. Alcorn egregiously reoffended, this time to lure two children online and successfully groomed, manipulated and commodified one of (the victims),” Crown attorney Dayna Queau-Guzzi told provincial court Judge Robert Heinrichs at a sentencing hearing Thursday.

“His prior sentence clearly did not have the necessary deterrent effect,” she said.

Court documents say the victims, who were 13 and 14 at the time and in foster care, had been previously sexually exploited, and were described as “extremely vulnerable.”

Alcorn began separate communications with the girls over Facebook Messenger in the fall of 2024, in which he offered to take them shopping, buy them clothes and dinner, and go out to a movie.

For a time, the younger victim blocked Alcorn’s messages after he sent her a picture of his penis. He turned his attention to the 14-year-old girl.

Alcorn and the girl began communicating every day and exchanged sexual pictures with each other. Alcorn sent the girl food deliveries and paid for Uber rides in Winnipeg.

Alcorn “spent 3 ½ months grooming her, promising her many of the things a girlfriend would anticipate — dinner, movies… shopping — things a vulnerable Indigenous child would not have the benefit of receiving every day,” Queau-Guzzi said.

Alcorn, who told the girl he was 39, made plans to book an Airbnb rental in Winnipeg in March 2025 to have sex with the girl but weeks earlier cancelled the trip, and told her he didn’t think they should meet.

“I could never tell anyone that I’m in a relationship with a 14-year-old, and I feel that you can’t tell anyone of my age either,” Alcorn wrote. “I don’t want for us to have to hide our love. I want us to be able to show it to the world and celebrate it.”

A short time later, the girl told her case worker she wanted to talk to police about a man she had met online who had been asking her to have sex.

Investigators interviewed the girl, reviewed her electronic messages with Alcorn, and encouraged her not to meet with him as police tried to nail down his location.

Days later, Alcorn drove to Winnipeg and picked up the girl at her foster home and spent the night at a downtown Airbnb where Alcorn sexually assaulted her.

Alcorn drove the girl home the next morning and picked her up again that night, at which time the girl’s foster mother took note of his licence plate number. When the girl didn’t return home the following morning, her foster mother called police.

Police found Alcorn’s car in a parking lot in the 110 block of Market Avenue, contacted Airbnb and confirmed he had rented a suite on the block.

When Alcorn didn’t reply to police demands to open the door, officers used the lock code to enter the suite and arrested him standing in the hallway. Police found the girl hiding in a closet.

The girl’s case worker told court she has been “significantly disrupted” by the abuse and lives with shame and self-blame.

“The effects of this exploitation are ongoing and profound,” the woman said.

A pre-sentence report prepared for court says Alcorn minimized his actions by saying both girls told him they’d had sex with older men and argued the older girl “was just mad at me” after he told her they should “break up.”

Defence lawyer Matt Munce recommended Heinrichs sentence Alcorn to eight years in prison, arguing he showed some understanding about the wrongness of his actions when he tried to stop communications with the girl and through his guilty pleas.

Alcorn apologized to the victims, telling court he knows the harm he has caused.

“I don’t know where I went wrong in my life, but I do know I don’t want to continue to do this,” he said.

Heinrichs will sentence Alcorn Sept. 14.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca