Tip from Australia leads to Winnipeg arrest on child-porn charges

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/08/2017 (2973 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 28-year-old Winnipeg man is facing several sexual abuse and child pornography charges after the Winnipeg police internet child exploitation unit discovered evidence he had been sexually assaulting a six-year-old child for several months and distributing images online.

Last Friday, the child exploitation unit learned authorities in Australia arrested a man who was a critical link in identifying and apprehending the Winnipeg suspect.

It’s believed the two men shared pornographic content with each other, Winnipeg police spokesman Const. Jay Murray said Monday.

Later Friday, officers with the child exploitation and child abuse units armed with search warrants found the six-year-old victim and the suspect at a residence in East Kildonan, where numerous electronic devices were seized.

Murray said the man and the child were known to each other, however he did not go into further detail to protect the victim’s identity.

Signy Arnason, the associate executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said the issue of child sexual abuse is a “pervasive” one in Canadian society.

“We receive 3,500 reports per month from Canadians currently, and every single year that’s going up between 10 and 15 per cent, and I expect that trend obviously to continue,” Arnason said.

According to a January 2016 report from the centre for child protection, 70 per cent of the 44,000 images assessed appeared to have been recorded in a home setting.

“At the end of the day, what we know from this issue is that child sexual abuse is a huge problem and it’s happening within homes and communities across Canada, as well as worldwide,” she said.

In the past, the centre and authorities would rely on victim accounts to determine whether crimes were committed. “Now, we have the imagery to prove that these horrific crimes occur against very young children day in and day out,” she said.

Arnason said the trauma of the abuse itself is significant, but the continued trauma from the widespread distribution of the images adds another layer to what the child may go through in the future.

“In terms of the proliferation of this material, we see repeat images over and over again,” she said, pointing out the centre’s newly launched web-scraping technology aiming at reducing sharing and hastening removal of child pornography.

“At the end of the day, we need to make this abundantly more difficult for offenders to find, and to reduce the level of trauma being experienced by children.”

Arnason said that identifying the issue so early in the child’s life is a positive. Abuse can go on undetected for years, and its effects can linger and perpetuate trauma in a child’s life.

The accused man has been charged with possession of child pornography, invitation to sexual touching, sexual assault, sexual interference and making, printing, publishing or possessing child pornography for the purpose of publication, in addition to importing, distributing, selling or possessing child pornography for the purpose of distribution or sale.

He is in custody.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca