He maintained his innocence and told police he could have been framed by an intruder in his home who sent sexually explicit images to a child from his Facebook account, but in the end, there was an abundance of evidence to convict the 28-year-old man on six counts of child luring, a St. John's judge has ruled.
“The case against the accused is overwhelming,” Provincial Court Judge James Walsh said Tuesday morning as the man listened to the proceedings via phone from prison.
Walsh convicted the man of one of the six charges at the end of his trial last month, saying screenshots of a text exchange were proof enough to find him guilty of exposing himself to a child. The judge opted to take some time to consider the other five charges and returned Tuesday with guilty verdicts on all of them.
The child, who was known to the accused, testified she was 13 years old in February 2018 when the man had sent her a Facebook message asking her to “send nudes.” He sent her a photo of his penis and videos of himself masturbating, which were played in the courtroom at trial while the man covered his eyes.
“The totality of the evidence leaves me with no doubt that each charge has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt." — Judge James Walsh
The girl said she knew it was the accused in the images because she recognized the background of the video as a bedroom in a home where the man was living.
The girl told police the man had repeatedly asked her for images, saying it was her turn and she had to do it. She sent him a semi-nude photo and a 30-second video, she told an investigator, crying.
The girl’s adult sister testified she had been in bed that night when the child texted her from another room and told her what had happened. The woman said she logged into the girl’s Facebook account and found the conversation with the man had been deleted, but the images were still there, She copied the videos her sister had received onto a USB drive and contacted police.
She also contacted the man, telling him the girl had told her what happened and demanding he delete the images the child had sent him.
“WTF is wrong with you?” she asked him, reminding him that he was 26 at that time and the child was 13.
“It’s f---ed up, I know. I didn’t want to do it, please don’t tell anyone,” the man replied. “I’m sick to my stomach and I feel dizzy.”
The man did not testify at trial, but a 90-minute recorded interview with police was played in the courtroom. In it, he acknowledged knowing the child’s age and suggested someone may have broken into his home and sent the videos to frame him. He didn’t admit he had sent the videos, but he didn’t say — when asked by police — that he had not sent them, Walsh noted.
“I find the evidence of the complainant to be truthful, forthright and credible,” Walsh said of the child.
He pointed to information uncovered by the RNC investigation, including the fact the man’s Facebook account had been accessed at the times stamped on the messages and the IP address used to access the account had been tracked to the man’s home. The judge also noted the accused used the same phrases in his interview with investigator Const. Terry Follett that were contained in the text exchange with the complainant’s sister.
“The totality of the evidence leaves me with no doubt that each charge has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” Walsh said.
The man is facing certain jail time, given there are mandatory minimum sentences ranging from three months to a year for each of his convictions. Since a number of his offences overlap — the act of sending the child explicit images, for example, satisfied the criteria for multiple different types of child luring convictions — it’s expected some of them will be stayed.
The man will be back in court next week.
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
