Sex offender lures kids hours after release

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This article was published 12/02/2021 (2059 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man convicted of sexual offences against children is back in custody awaiting sentencing on more charges after he started luring new victims within hours of being released on day parole.

David Thomas Pearson, 38, pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of internet luring involving five girls between the ages of 12 and 16.

Pearson used several social media apps “designed to attract children,” and posed as a 15-year-old boy. He communicated with more than 130 young girls and a handful of boys before he was arrested, Crown attorney Katie Dojack told court.

Pearson entered his guilty pleas — including one for possessing child pornography and another for breaching a court order that prohibits him from contacting children — before provincial court Judge Tim Killeen, the same judge who sentenced him in 2017 to nearly six years in prison for luring offences.

Court was told Pearson was released on day parole on March 6, 2019, and immediately bought a cellphone. Some time later, during a search of Pearson’s room, a probation officer saw messages from young girls “popping up” on Pearson’s cellphone. The phone was turned over to RCMP, who arrested Pearson last June.

Police were ultimately able to identify five girls — four from the U.S and one from Canada — who Pearson, over the course of three weeks, convinced to share intimate pictures and videos with him. Two of the victims told investigators they thought of Pearson as their boyfriend.

Pearson will be sentenced in June following the completion of a court-ordered pre-sentence report.

In 2011, Pearson was charged with luring for communicating with a 15-year-old Las Vegas girl he met online while pretending to be a 16-year-old boy. It wasn’t until May 2016 that he was sentenced to two years in prison, by which time he had already been arrested for new luring offences involving six young girls.

At a 2017 sentencing hearing for those offences, Pearson told Killeen the lengthy delay in the 2011 case allowed him to reoffend.

Had his 2011 case been dealt with sooner, “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,” Pearson told Killeen.

“I can say before this all occurred, I wasn’t aware of how the victims would be impacted by my actions,” Pearson said.

Pearson was on bail awaiting sentencing for the 2011 offences when he bought a laptop and cellphone — a violation of conditions of his bail, and continued to pose as a boy on an instant-messaging app. He asked girls for nude photos.

His online 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 and found zoomed-in photos of children’s genitals while they were playing on the beach, court heard at the time.

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

Police discovered Pearson had been communicating with at least six girls in the United States between the ages of 13 and 16 from 2013 until his arrest in 2015.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca