Prosecutors want a 10-year prison sentence for a Kamloops man who videotaped himself sexually assaulting his nine-year-old daughter and then shared that recording with an undercover FBI agent posing as a fellow pedophile.
The 38-year-old man cannot be named under a court-ordered publication ban put in place to protect the identity of the victim.
He was in court for a sentencing hearing Wednesday after earlier pleading guilty to charges of sexual interference of a person under 16, producing child pornography, distributing child pornography and possession of child pornography.
The man has been in jail since his arrest on Dec. 15, 2022, when Kamloops Mounties, acting on a tip from the FBI, executed a search warrant at his home.
Pedophile group chat infiltrated
Court heard the man was an active member of a pedophile group chat on the social media platform Kik in November and December of 2022. Unbeknownst to him, two members of the group were undercover FBI agents.
Crown prosecutor Alexandra Janse said the man introduced himself to the group as a dad with a young daughter: “I am a 37 M with a 9 y/o dau.”
The two undercover agents began to individually chat privately with the man. He told them he abuses his daughter when she is asleep and said he drugs her to ensure she will not wake up. He also boasted to them about how often he abused her and sent a number of videos.
One of the videos he sent clearly showed him abusing his daughter in her bed. Another video appeared to show him attempting to rape her.
Janse said the Crown cannot prove that the second video shows the man and his daughter, nor can it be proven that he drugged her. She referred to those comments as him “bragging” about his exploits.
The man made another claim that similarly cannot be proven — that he sexually assaulted one of his daughter’s friends at a sleepover.
“He bragged about assaulting that child, but there is no evidence to prove that it happened or not,” she said.
“There are certain things that [he] said during his chat with the undercover agents that Crown cannot prove, that appear to be him boasting or fantasizing in his back and forth chat with those officers."
At one point, an agent asked the man whether he is “active” with his daughter.
“Only when she’s sleeping,” he replied,
"I don’t want to corrupt her and f--k her up, but I still want to have my fun.”
'You stole her innocence'
The man was on house arrest when he unknowingly walked into the FBI’s online sting. He was lucky to avoid jail a few weeks earlier after pleading guilty to two counts of publishing an intimate image without consent.
In that case, the man’s ex-wife — the mother of the most recent victim — was logged into his Facebook account when she found that he’d sent intimate and graphic videos of her to other women on Messenger.
The woman fought through tears in court on Wednesday reading a lengthy victim-impact statement.
“After I heard what you had done to our daughter, a part of me broke — a part of me that will never be repaired,” she said.
“What had you done? How many other children had you hurt? How did this happen under my nose?”
The woman said the offending turned her family’s life upside down. She said her daughter now suffers severe anxiety.
“You stole her innocence. You used her body for your own pleasure. You abused her,” she said.
“You deserve to suffer a lifetime of agony, just as you gave her a lifetime of trauma.”
She said she hopes to see him locked up for a long time.
“The only time our children are safe from you is when you are behind bars,” she said.
Lengthy prison sentence sought
Janse is seeking a sentence in the range of eight to 10 years, while defence lawyer Cam Johnson suggested 5.5 years.
“There is absolutely no downplaying the circumstances that bring us here,” he said.
“There is no doubt that he is at the very highest end of abuse of trust. There is likewise no downplaying the degree of impact this offence has had on his daughter."
But Johnson urged Kamloops provincial court Judge Mariane Armstrong to consider the fact that the man is not being sentenced for raping or otherwise penetrating his daughter.
“Make no bones about it, there is a chasm of difference between penile or digital penetration and what happened in the case at bar,” he said.
Johnson is expected to finish his sentencing submissions on Thursday. A date for a decision from Armstrong has not yet been set.
