Judge sends ‘master manipulator’ child-sex predator to prison for 22 years

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This article was published 08/01/2021 (1922 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He groomed his girlfriend to sacrifice her young daughter to his sexual appetite, and then, when denied access to the girl, turned his attention online, where he persuaded another man to sexually abuse his baby daughter and send him pictures.

“The accused is a master manipulator and his powers of persuasion are considerable,” Queen’s Bench Justice Herbert Rempel said Thursday before sentencing the 32-year-old man to 22 years in prison. “The fervour he demonstrated in getting others to sexually abuse children is profoundly disturbing.”

The offender, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim, was convicted after trial last year on 20 child sex- and child pornography-related offences.

Police arrested the man and his then-girlfriend in October 2016, after the woman’s brother reported finding child pornography on an electronic device she had accessed.

The couple was separated at the time, and the woman was living with her brother.

Police later found more than 80 images on the man’s various electronic devices showing him and his girlfriend sexually abusing her then four-year-old daughter.

The girl’s mother previously pleaded guilty to four sexual assault and child pornography-related offences involving her daughter. She is still awaiting sentencing.

At a related hearing prior to the man’s trial, the female co-accused claimed she only abused her daughter after the man threatened her with violence if she didn’t participate. She later testified she lied, admitting she was a “willing participant” and wanted to keep the accused happy and preserve their relationship.

At the time of the abuse, the mother had only two weekend visits per month with her daughter, who was living with her biological father.

“The child had nowhere to run or hide from the accused and she knew she could not rely on her mother for protection from his feral instincts,” Rempel said. “On these facts I am satisfied the Crown was not speaking hyperbolically when it said the accused persuaded the mother to willingly offer up her daughter as a sacrifice to his insatiable and grotesque sexual appetites.”

An examination of the man’s cellphones uncovered Facebook and text chats discussing the sexual abuse of children and evidence the man had shared abuse images via a peer-to-peer social media app.

In one online exchange, the man posed as a young woman and persuaded a teen girl to send him nude pictures of herself.

In one three-month period, while the man was on bail and no longer had access to the child victim, he exchanged 1,200 messages online with another child-sex predator who has since been arrested for abusing his baby daughter. The offender requested the man abuse the girl and send him a picture, which he did, six days later.

“What is most disturbing about these posts is the fervour with which the accused glorifies the sexual abuse of children and encourages others to engage in the sexual abuse of children, as well,” Rempel said.

At trial, the man denied any wrongdoing, testifying the man pictured in the criminal images was a look-a-like hired by his ex-girlfriend to frame him, a claim Rempel rejected as “absurd.”

Rempel credited the man for time served, reducing his remaining sentence to just over 16 years.

dean.pritchard@freepress.m.ca